


Written by the Winners

by sinnerrific



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Acute stress disorder, Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Gaslighting, Gen, Implied/Referenced Animal Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Death, Implied/Referenced Hebephilia, Implied/Referenced Pedophilia, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Apocalypse, Starts Tame but Rating Will Escalate, Worldbuilding, triggering, world reset
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:13:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22103125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinnerrific/pseuds/sinnerrific
Summary: There was never a boy named Victor who left the sleepy town of Postwick, became Champion, and saved the world with the help of his childhood best friend and greatest rival. There never was. If there had been, maybe something happened. Something bad enough that that the young man Victor would become got desperate enough to tear the universe apart, to make the pain stop, make someone else do it, undo all that he had accomplished for nothing and so he—There always was a girl. A ten-year-old girl named Gloria.Who sits up waiting and watching her phone on the day of Champion Leon’s arrival in Postwick. In her mind, she turns over a world of information she has learned just the night before. Memories that aren’t hers of events that no longer haven’t happened yet. Knowledge that no child should ever possess or be forced to bear.Will it change anything? Probably. Maybe. Maybe not. If nothing else she’s determined that shewillfind a way to save Hop, and the ones she hasn't met yet, but knows as friends and rivals in her heart. There has to be a way.There might be sacrifices made, but there has to be a way to save Galar.
Relationships: Hop/Masaru | Victor, Hop/Sonia (Pokemon)
Comments: 91
Kudos: 94





	1. Postwick

**Author's Note:**

> Postgame Galar feels kind of like this weird, dormant volcano with a band-aid stuck over the top just waiting for something to go off regarding all that weeeeird apocalyptic shit that…maybe really didn't get solved. You know?
> 
> This shit may get dark if I go on long enough. I'll warn for any triggers as / if / when they may appear. Don't read if you don't like bad things happening to ten-year-olds. There is planned to be a lot of that.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ten-year-old girl in the wonderful world of Pokémon. A ten-year-old boy that she remembers never being there first.

Gloria sat on the couch in her living room, staring down at the screen of her Rotom phone she held up with both hands.

It was morning. And the exhibition match was about to start.

_"Welcome, one and all!"_

(It could have been another child sitting on that couch in her home where she lived in Postwick with her mother. It could have been someone else.)

_"Welcome to the wonderful world of Pokémon!"_

(But it was not, Gloria reminded herself firmly. It could not have been another child, there never was another child. There never had been another child now. And that was sad, and she was frightened still by what that meant, but it was true. Because now the child watching this match in this home with her mother was Gloria, and the rest of it would be Gloria too, and that was that.)

What a wonderful world indeed, she thought dryly, swallowing as she kept a smile blankly on her face and let it rest there while the chairman’s speech began.

—

It could be said, even now, that Gloria was a simple, straightforward girl.

She always had been. She was direct enough in her thoughts and words to unwittingly hide, even from herself, how clever she actually was. Doing things quickly enough that she didn’t process working them out in the first place was a way to escape notice that any reasoning had taken place at all, though it had, just in the most quick and easy way to accomplish what needed doing or figuring out. She was uncomplicated and did not linger too long on things like self-reflection, or insecurity, which was a remarkable trait for how the majority of people, adult or ten-year-old, _did_.

Another child might have thought in that way, might have spent time on analyzing twice or more the information that they already knew, trying to decide what was the truth, what was the answer that made the most sense. Another child might hesitate more than Gloria would.

Would that make a difference, hypothetically? Would it make more of a difference if Gloria already knew what that child, if they had existed, might have chosen ultimately before the choice needed to be made at all?

Of course it would change things. Perhaps not as many as would be expected. The world didn’t like to adjust the axis of events on which it turned for the decisions of a ten-year-old, no matter who or what they were.

Or weren’t, yet.

—

Gloria wasn’t thinking about any of that. Not about herself, or some other child that might have been, and now wasn’t, because there was only Gloria. She’d done plenty of that not sleeping the night before, and her mind was ready for other problems to chew on.

So Gloria watched her phone like any ten-year-old girl would, not with the same thoughts she might have had if the stream on her video app had played this same thing yesterday. Now her thoughts were sharper, a bit, and her focus was on the man giving the commencement speech for the League’s upcoming exhibition match.

This man was important. Which she’d known before, but now it was in a different way than what scant little she’d known before. She had known very little before…

_("I’m sorry. I-I couldn’t, I can’t—please, I know you’re a kid, I was too, but someone, anyone else—")_

…before, well. Last night.

She stared at the screen. She stared at the chairman. Rose. He was going to be important soon, and not in the way that grown-ups usually meant important, like a distant thing even if they never thought about it.

Gloria had known next to nothing about this man yesterday. Gloria knew everything about him now.

And when he spoke, she listened.

_"Our beloved Galar region is a wonderful place…"_

Hm.

_"…with thriving nature…"_

Gloria snorted.

_"…beautiful cities, and many Pokémon with which we fill our lives!"_

Internally rolling her eyes at his posturing…well, no, he probably believed it, which was the truly frustrating part, Gloria thought. She swiped at the app interface with a flick of her thumb on the corner of the streaming video to make it blow up wide, filling the phone’s screen.

Despite herself, she wasn’t paying much attention to the words the longer the speech went on. She knew already what he was going to say, it didn’t have any hints or anything but things she could put on her list of reasons why Gloria didn’t like him now. She (he) already (hadn’t) heard it all before.

Another child could have (hadn’t), when he was(n’t) ten years old in Postwick on this sofa.

Gloria was sitting here now. There was no other child. The phone was hers, her mother was hers, and if she knew how it might have been were that not the case…

Well, she did. So Rose was her enemy now.

And that was that.

It did not occur to Gloria, not once in eight-something hours that had passed since the storm of particles and light-shine-loud that had made her jump up of out bed in awe and terror to bear witness to all that followed, to think that she had dreamed all this.

She’d been awake all night, before the incident and certainly the whole time after. Crying for some of it. But staying up and refusing to sleep was not to prove anything to herself. She wouldn’t have doubted what she experienced in her mind with her own senses, didn’t think to scramble for explanations that were more plausible but clearly not what she had seen and heard. She did not assume or even wonder at the possibility she might have been dreaming, or she might be crazy.

Gloria was a simple girl. In her mind, what she experienced was what had happened. There were no gaps in her reasoning that lies would fill with anything short of a laughable lack of satisfactory explanation, and unlike most people, most children, she did not and had never participated in or understood the ritual of believing things that were not true because they were less frightening when you could lie to yourself something plausible, certainly possible, except it wasn’t what you’d seen.

It wasn’t a matter of principle. She didn’t think she was better than anyone else. If anything, often in the past, Gloria had felt from the way that people looked at her when she spoke, like she was missing something that everybody else was in on.

It didn’t exactly hurt much, and she wasn’t the type to dwell on being left out if the thing that others had without her was not a thing she wanted by itself. But it could be embarrassing, a bit.

Gloria did not realize any of this. Maybe later, maybe sooner than she ever would have with the knowledge she had now, the knowledge of how people had(n’t) acted to guide her on cues to look for when they did, even in situations that weren’t familiar.

But not yet. She was new to this. She just thought that the world was simple, and now, after last night, she thought it was simple and also terrible and very frightening.

But she didn’t have to stand for it.

Not when she knew what could be done…

Well, for this part. This part, at least, another child could have managed.

After that she’d have to wait and see.

Without any existential angst to cloud her mind, Gloria could keep her focus back to the man she knew years’ worth about without ever having met or seen him personally. Not the words, they were trite, but the faces he made, mannerisms. How he did things.

How he tricked people. This was important. Some things she didn’t know, but she wanted to, so maybe she could watch and figure it out.

Her expression was placid, a smile she wore like always to reflect what people wanted to see instead of how she felt. That was a thing she had realized would be something she had to do, after last night. It was a thing she was going to have to learn.

Gloria thought she could do it. She could do it now without much difficulty, even if she hated the man on the screen. She smiled a lot. Smiling wasn’t difficult.

_"As you know…"_

The chairman was speaking with that watery look in his eyes, like he had so much love in him he wanted to cry, and Gloria wanted to gag. She watched the man pull a Poké Ball into one hand from somewhere in his suit.

_"…our society is able to thrive…"_

On your lies, Gloria thought, smile fixed firmly in place.

_"…thanks to help from these mysterious creatures…"_

Most of them were pretty simple, actually, the thought occurred to her as he said it. But Gloria kept on watching.

_"…that we call Pokémon."_

As Rose spoke, she watched _him_ watch the audience, with those watery, melancholy eyes of his. They were boring into the camera like he was staring at only her.

Without breaking eye contact with the camera, he threw his Poké Ball in his hand up in a clean arc, which the video followed, until it burst open to release a young Cufant inside.

This wasn’t important. Gloria let her mind wander, now and in other moments where the focus on the video was not on the chairman. In her mind’s eye she stayed fixed squarely on how Rose’s face was in this moment. His posture, the way he held himself on screen when his body from the torso up was the center of the camera’s focus.

She analyzed what she could see. Was seeing. What another child might have seen, except there was no other child, she just knew now what they might have experienced if it wasn’t only ever her there to experience it.

Gloria was simple, but in the way that meant not turning her back on what she knew. It was not the kind of simple people meant as a way of saying _stupid_ , a condition of being poor at, or unable, to see and to learn from what she saw.

It might have taken her longer to reach the stage where she analyzed people consciously if last night hadn’t happened. But it had. She did not wonder about this, in fact she didn’t realize it. What mattered was that she could take in more details now that she would not have noticed yesterday, watching the same speech on any other morning before she’d known exactly who and what the chairman really was.

With a smile, of course. Because Gloria was a girl that smiled often and it came easily, and she figured it was best to act like nothing was different because being called crazy was a bad idea if she wanted to make things better (than they hadn’t been or wouldn’t be, if she could help it. _If._ ). Faking an expression was not in her nature, but it was also surprisingly easy, enough that she wasn’t having to do it consciously after half a morning even as her mind spun and worked with what she saw on the Rotom phone screen.

Rose continued his speech. Gloria listened. Gloria thought about what she knew in the simplest terms. Not for its own sake, but wondering what came next. For her specifically, that is, given that she _knew_ what came next.

What hadn’t come next, rather. Not for another child.

She was Gloria. What was real was her, and today being today, and tomorrow being tomorrow, and another child might have experienced more and she knew what all those experiences might have been because they’d driven that child to…

To…

It hurt. Her heart ached. She stopped thinking about that and watched Rose again, to see if she could pick up on things that might help later, in case another child had not noticed them before.

She could pick up, besides his expression, that Rose was an effeminate, sincere-looking man. Rose was, obviously, chairman of so many companies that chairman simply became a universal title and one so redundant it hardly felt like it needed to be stated. Everyone did it anyway, and often, though Gloria had not yet heard this happen yet outside Postwick for herself. Gloria had never traveled outside of Postwick at all since moving here, and she didn’t really remember much of what came before, being little at the time.

But she knew from how people now spoke of Rose, and would for some time, that the man called chairman might as well just be called prime minister or president instead. He was as good as elected to make all the decisions that went into running the region. It was little wonder he’d taken it upon himself to be the grandiose commentator for something like today’s match, inserting himself in the proceedings of the annual opening events to introduce the battlers and of course introducing all of Galar first and working backward from there, because that’s how adults made speeches.

Gloria couldn’t say she cared much about the match that was soon to start, but even without knowledge of Rose’s intentions, Gloria found herself irritated and bored by his words. She rolled her eyes internally at this man and how he spoke. Full of himself.

He wasn’t the only one. Internally, she groaned. Remembering another person she’d be analyzing later in the day.

He made Rose seem almost tolerable, for distance’s sake. Rose wasn’t going to run into her personally more than a few times before he actually became important, unless she.

Could she change things? Should she?

_"Yes, Pokémon are all around us—in the sea, in the sky, and even with us in our towns!"_

It still wasn’t over. Get on with it, Gloria thought to herself with annoyance, but her smile stayed in place. That wasn’t difficult, which still surprised her a little bit. Maybe it had been something another child would have practiced, or had to practice, as he grew up, but being a ten-year-old and already knowing, she had to start it early.

Not what another child might have done, sitting and watching this on his phone for the first time on this morning. That child’s smile would be real.

But that hadn’t happened. There was no other child. And Gloria knew what that child would have known, if he’d ever been, and now he hadn’t. In a sense she wasn’t quite watching this speech, or living this day even, for the first time.

She still was though, she thought, certain of that much. It wasn’t even memories, really. Just…feelings. (She did not quite realize that memories often came in that form more clearly than images or scenes cut together in a format like a moving picture.) She knew she was Gloria. She felt like Gloria. But she knew what it’d feel like if she wasn’t, too.

She knew what would be coming to engulf the Galar region soon like a tide. How to stop it.

But then later. Later, then, _years_ later, after—

No.

No she didn’t want to think about that. It hurt. Her smile twitched and she pushed the thoughts away, unbothered to do so for now. There’d be time.

She wasn’t afraid to acknowledge to herself she would cry if she thought hard about what happened after Rose. That this man was only the first. She turned her thoughts deliberately (so she wouldn’t cry, it was too late in the morning, and there was company on the way so it had to be a sit-and-think for later) and wondered if she should work harder to hide these things she knew if she was going to be traveling. Because nobody would believe it, and she accepted that as easily as she accepted that she _did_.

Would they notice she was off? The way she could notice now, the tics in Rose’s smile that belied his words of love?

Or would people look at her and assume what they saw was something else? Something more possible, even if it wasn’t exactly what they’d experienced when they looked at her with their senses. If she did things or acted in ways that a ten-year-old girl would not.

Gloria was not used to thinking so deeply and it was getting tiresome. Maybe another child, or rather who that child grew up into, later, would have stayed awake wondering about such things. But Gloria was ready for the exhibition match to start on her phone, if only because it meant that the day was finally starting to get to the the point that mattered.

But she had to wait. Because the stupid chairman was _still talking_.

_"And those of us who choose to raise and train Pokémon to do battle and compete…"_ Rose was saying onscreen, holding up the Cufant’s Poké Ball that had bounced back to him while the short creature stood loyally by his side.

Gloria’s hands were white-knuckled on her phone with the effort it took to sit still and smiling, not worried about the action as she knew the Rotom inside wouldn’t feel it. The little machine Pokémon was embedded deep within the wires beneath the shell. It was a weird, but cool thing to know, one she hadn’t before.

There were a lot of those. They made her feel more grown-up, and that prompted her to swallow her anger and lessen her grip. She ought to be nicer to her Rotom phone time around, Gloria thought suddenly. Another stray thought she tucked away, like a lock of hair behind her ears.

For now.

Pay attention.

_"…we call Pokémon Trainers!"_

On the last words Rose lifted his hands high and raised his voice for the crowd: the camera cut to an angle behind his back, to capture the way the pumped-up crowd went wild for his words.

Well. Wild for the fact that those words seemed to be nearly done with, at least.

The speech was no crowd raiser. Oh, yes. Pokémon Trainers train Pokémon, Gloria thought, with another internal roll of the eyes at the commotion onscreen. Grass was green. Water was wet. _Honestly_. Everyone there was just impatient to watch the match, nothing more. The love of the chairman couldn’t even top that.

Gloria, unlike she might have been yesterday, wasn’t excited for the match anymore. Rose kept speaking a bit longer, because this was where the introductions began in earnest, but she let her mind glaze away from it and from the screen. Thinking elsewhere. She knew why she did it. She she knew who would be battling in the match and how it ended and she didn’t want to see.

She didn’t want to watch trainers, even Gym Leaders, that she had never met and yet knew like friends or…well, not-friends. She hadn’t met them yet. She. She just. She wanted Hop to get here already. Gloria only wanted to see _him_ now, was impatient for that now that Rose was done. She felt uncharacteristically anxious and knew it was just because of the fright another child-turned-grown-up might have felt if things were later and went differently and without Gloria.

As if something might go terribly wrong if she couldn’t check with her own eyes that Hop was okay. Still okay.

Too much. Too much. Gloria’s hands were white-knuckled on the phone again and the screen was brighter, louder, because her eyes were blurred.

No other child there hadn’t been they hadn’t wanted to have been now it was Gloria but she could do this it couldn’t be impossible.

She breathed in deeply through her nose several times, unbroken smile boring into nothing with blank eyes as the tears were blinked back before they could fall. She didn’t pay attention to the screen, reminding herself that Hop would be here soon, he would, and everything was still going to be okay. She’d figure something out.

_("I loved him—I can’t anymore—please, I’m sorry, please.")_

Adults could cry like children was another thing she had learned, she recalled, mind calming as the battlers began to show onscreen.

She didn’t want to see Raihan now. She didn’t want to see—

Oh who was she kidding she _absolutely_ wanted to see the Charizard.

Her smile twitched as something caught her eye. Her gaze very deliberately stayed off the other trainer the camera panned to, that she refused to so much as give a glance at. Instead her eyes caught quickly on the hulking Pokémon beside Raihan’s opponent.

Her heart surged with a happiness that was all her own, the first time she’d felt in the present all morning. Charizard had always been her favorite Pokémon. Ever since she was a little girl. She didn’t bother thinking to try and determine if she knew if another child might have liked that Pokémon; Gloria didn’t care.

She liked it, and it was cool, and she had always, always wanted one. So much so that she didn’t ever catch Pokémon of her own in like Hop had, the one pensive and secret-keeping bone in her body holding out for a tiny, secret hope that if she waited long enough, maybe a miracle would happen and she’d, maybe, just happen to get a Charmander as her first Pokémon as she’d always dreamed of.

Well, that little pensive bone in her body could get removed now, because she knew no such miracle was to happen. Gloria wasn’t upset about that. She was ten, not four, and it had been unrealistic when Charizard weren’t really native to Galar. Moreover, after last night she knew how things would turn out to be now, and she was jittery and excited to focus on that, terrified, excited.

Still. Even with all she knew, all that hadn’t happened…the screen came closer to her face as she pulled it up, unbidden, eyes bright watching the fire-type onscreen.

The sight of that great, fire-breathing dragon growing to Gigantamax size took her breath away. Long enough to hold her, enraptured, for the first time since the stream had begun.

She was so enthralled (even knowing even understanding why she shouldn’t what would happen but it was so amazing, the Pokémon was so cool it was just so amazing) that it took the ringing of the doorbell to bring her out of her fangirl reverie and back to reality and the couch.

She’d known it was coming and wasn’t the jumpy sort, so she didn’t startle, didn’t react at all, still watching the last few moments that she could. Before a familiar call from outside made her remember more clearly that it was time to stop watching the match and get on with…

…with her life. Her adventure. One that another child had purposefully never lived, and now she must.

It sounded complicated. But the sound of the familiar voice and familiar footsteps on the floor as someone entered made her heart warm impossibly with fondness, deeper than she would have felt yesterday. Not knowing then what she did now.

Fondness and terror and a lot of things, actually. Because so much would happen. So much she couldn’t _let_ happen.

And then he was there.

"Oh! That your flash new phone—"

_("—Victor?"_ )

"—Gloria?"

First things first.

Hop greeted her without Gloria having to say anything or admit that, okay, sometimes she’d done the Charizard pose in the mirror to practice it but _only for Charizard._ Gloria heard her mother approach and vaguely was remembering something about a bag, and remembering how silly it was Hop was here hours early before the exhibition match had even ended.

She smiled at him, at her mother, mind on the day ahead. It would be a busy one, and without listening to anything Hop was prattling on about presents in favor of just taking comfort in his voice before he was taking off again, Gloria knew: that today she’d be getting a Pokémon.

But, first things first.

She headed for her room to tidy up a bit. Mind working, planning, not too much or too elaborately. She grabbed her mum’s hand-me-down bag, mindful of what Hop had said about needing the space to carry things. Strange things that hadn’t been strange at all, that were normal and doable for a ten-year-old. Even one knowing she might be holding in her mind the weight of the world. And the life of her friend, who she had never thought about this deeply until today with awful images swirling around her head.

(Of the same friend, neighbor, rival, that another child might have loved. Loved deeply, had wanted to be with forever and then lost.

And refused to go on without him.

Refused to let the world go on without him.

Even if it had to happen, somehow, somewhere. Even if another child had to do it, live that life and that journey carrying all the knowledge of what was undone in the no-longer-child’s fit of maddening pain using Pokémon that people didn’t even know really existed, the kind you weren’t supposed to be able to catch.)

That would come whenever it did, Gloria thought finally, snapping out of her reverie and wiping her eyes stubbornly. She picked up the well-worn canvas bag she knew (a bag another child wouldn’t have known, but she was not _Victor_ , she was Gloria and this bag was her mum’s) and it was too big for her but it would work, she could grow into it.

And she didn’t mind the weight.

It was time to get going to Hop’s, she thought, checking the clock in her childhood room. And that was that.

She didn’t mind the weight. She could carry it.

Someone had to.

Gloria breathed in deep and smiled for her mum as she said goodbye, twisted the knob and opened the front door to the sunny sight of her sleepy doomed Postwick waiting outside. Time to head to Hop’s.

They had a train to catch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> starting a new file is always fun until you realize that you just end up using the same strategy you already did the first time
> 
> idk tho maybe gloria's actually good at pokémon


	2. Route 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You don't get to be mad at people for things that you don't know about. You don't get to resent people for flaws that you can't recognize.
> 
> Also, Wooloo.

It was so weird, _feeling_ _weird_ about not having a Pokémon yet.

Gloria wasn’t happy about it. It wasn’t as if knowing more things (even if those things hadn’t happened. even if they wouldn’t happen, not to someone that hadn’t happened either. she still _knew_ them), being smarter, made her different. Or meant that Gloria herself was someone different now. Some other kid that had already trained Pokémon so much they were totally hooked.

In a lot of ways, Gloria liked those memories. She liked having that knowledge. The exciting memories were the part that was fun to think about, when things hadn’t been happy for a child her age that never existed, yet might have been if he had. Maybe could be for her, if she worked hard at it.

But now it was turning back around in her mind to becoming negative. Gloria had gone without Pokémon for ten years without much noticing anything different between her and anyone that had them, like Hop. She’d been content up until now just seeing the Pokémon that lived around Postwick, few and familiar as they were. She hadn’t felt lacking, not to have one for herself.

It wasn’t fair, and it didn’t even make sense, she thought grumpily. It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t have one soon anyway. Why was she worried about a stupid walk?

Her higher-minded ideals of the morning were getting harder to keep up. The tiredness of not sleeping last night had begun to set in, and for all she had quite a bit of knowledge in her brain that hadn’t been around before, the body that housed it was still just ten.

Gloria herself could hardly have been less aware of this. She had no inkling that she was more unhappy now for any special reason besides what the day had given her. She wasn’t used to being up early when she stayed up late.

It was to her luck that the mood didn’t show on her expression. At least, not enough that anyone could notice. Gloria normally did smile a lot by nature and even when she wasn’t in the best of moods. She was a happy enough kid.

Moreover, she was quiet. People bothered you much less when you smiled, Gloria had worked out with some part of her brain at an early age. She used that to her advantage without ever quite realizing that’s what she was doing, when she looked happy for people that would have asked why a kid might be snappy or sad.

Today, right now, Gloria wasn’t sad.

Afternoon had set in and Gloria was prickly with irritation, dragging her feet after Hop as he set off from his home to pick up— _him_. Hop’s brother.

Gloria resisted the urge to turn her gaze heavenward for strength. She wanted a Pokémon. She very much did, now. And even if this is how she got one, at this point it was easier to think about running back the way she came, grabbing any old Pokémon that she could convince to stay inside a ball, than deal with the rest of the afternoon she’d faced with so much conviction earlier in the day.

But really, what choice was there? There were the Budew in the yard, Gloria supposed, that hung around because her mum was a softie that left out extra compost in the garden for them. Also there was her mum’s Munchlax. But he was no battler, and for their kitchen’s sake they all preferred it that stayed way.

Postwick had no shortage of Wooloo, she supposed, though the part of her that knew Hop as her rival-who-wasn’t-yet wrinkled her nose at the thought. The soft, fluffy normal-types were often seen in town wandering about on the dirt roads, loose out there hopelessly lost. That was just kind of how Wooloo were. Even with farmers having those white-painted fences to keep them in, somehow, they always tumbled right on through as if by accident. They hardly seemed to do anything like they knew the consequences.

—

And speaking of Wooloo.

At the gate. To the Slumbering Weald.

Earlier.

Something weird. A thought.

It was right as she was leaving home with her bag. Gloria knew that part.

Yet all the same, she’d paused.

After heading out, she hadn’t intended to do more at the gate than let Hop say his piece if he was going to. Knowing that later, the Wooloo trying to get into the Weald was going to be fine: she was pretty sure there was a memory of Leon having it with him when he arrived for the two young trainers that had passed out in the fog.

But something pricked at the back of her mind and caught her curiosity right as she neared the end of the winding trail that led to the road from her front door.

No, not Hop. That he was standing out there and waiting for her the second time in one day was completely expected and unsurprising. It would have been even if this was any other day; he was just Hop.

It was when Gloria saw that Wooloo tackling the fence for what was and was not in two senses a second time. A question occurred to her that wouldn’t have under other circumstances—only came to mind after what had been a memory and settled, was suddenly jostled back to the forefront, new details striking that never had mattered before.

There was no recollection of having wondered at the time. But now Gloria did what another child couldn’t have, and asked herself, wait.

 _Why_ exactly was the Wooloo trying to open the gate?

It didn’t even occur to her to wonder if it was coincidence. It couldn’t have been a coincidence with all she knew had come after the last time this (hadn’t) happened.

She remembered the first time seeing the creature, its name then unknown, inside the Weald. Remembered its **look**. The piercing stare from a four-legged behemoth of a beast that lanced the very soul with its eyes alone. It was the most deliberate thing Gloria believed she could ever imagine. Thinking about it gave her gooseflesh all over her arms like a chill.

No trainer who experienced such an encounter in the Weald wasn’t _meant_ to be there. Gloria knew that if any boy named Victor would have been there, it was because Zacian wanted him there. Or wanted Hop there, maybe.

God. Hopefully it hadn’t been looking to see Leon, who had followed after them. But Zacian couldn’t have known Leon was coming. Gloria hoped so, at least.

After all, hadn’t Zacian been gone by the time Leon got there—hadn’t gotten there, never was there? Wouldn’t some other child have had to tell him, as Gloria supposed she’d have to tell him later, exactly what it was that she and Hop would see?

Hop was telling her to come back around to his house with him, impatient, and she heard his voice catch when he noticed the Wooloo too in the middle of their walk. Her own gaze kept sliding back to the Wooloo as he was lecturing it with (he thought) assured authority.

If the Wooloo breaking the fence was what had gotten them to go inside, to make sure they got in, then did that mean it was somehow Zacian’s doing?

Was it? Could it be? It had to be. Or did it? But how would that work? Was Zacian _calling_ the Wooloo?

Her skin prickled again. Could legendary Pokémon just… _do_ that? If they asked, did the rest of the Pokémon, the ones that weren’t, just have to obey? Or did they do it out of respect for the legendary heroes?

It made her feel uncomfortable, thinking of…of Pokémon understanding things like that, of them knowing what humans didn’t, that there _were_ legendary heroes. A clever Pokémon, maybe. A fae or a psychic type.

But a Wooloo?

Gloria knew, and knew that she knew, a staggering amount of…well, stuff that was new. After Victor’s life became the back of her own mind, she’d had moments it felt like her brain might just explode from it. She wanted to cry or hit things and yet felt more mature and she wanted to act like it but most of all she wanted to stop the confusing bad things that happened so far in the future she could barely examine them.

Some of it was memories that were exhilarating, things she was determined to experience for real, for her own self. She remembered how it felt to be crowned the Champion of Galar. She remembered what it felt like to _capture_ Zacian. To be powerful. To be a trainer that crowds would whoop for because it had been earned.

Yet it occurred to Gloria, in that moment, watching a Wooloo pitifully hit a fence and bouncing off on its own fleece to no avail…it hit her how very, very little she actually knew about Pokémon.

How little even a Champion could know after getting so far.

And when she thought about those people that’d be counting on her, if she made it to that seat that every challenger dreamed of, the Champion’s title… Gloria was afraid.

—

Morning was for being afraid.

Afternoon was for _Gloria didn’t wanna_.

The fear she’d felt just as the sun was hitting noon outside her own home was a distant memory by the time they were leaving Hop’s place, and replaced by exhausted annoyance. Gloria following in the other boy’s steps as he trotted ahead where he’d be waiting for her nearby at the start of Route 1.

Something like a gross mix of dread and annoyance had pulled together in a bitter slurry of emotional puke that spread backward from the tip of her tongue into her throat. She glanced ahead and already could discern the look on Hop’s face well before she caught up to him. He was waiting, arms folded, with that oh-so confident posture she’d almost forgotten could be extremely annoying, sometimes, when he really pushed it.

"Let’s get a move on!"

She kept smiling for him and didn’t scowl. The same as she would on a regular day. It wasn’t hard. Hop was easy to brush off in his worse moments. Or he always had been up until now. When his confident grin and can-do attitude in a suffocating degree _was_ all there was of him—was all he allowed himself to be.

That she had seen another side of him now didn’t make a difference. It _shouldn’t_ make a difference now. Hop was Hop. It didn’t make him a different person. He was still her friend, he’d never been a boy named Victor’s, um, everything.

Yet now that Gloria knew just what Hop _could_ do, what he could accomplish, how he might be if he knew there was a world outside his brother’s shadow and his family’s indifferent treatment—it somehow was different, a little, and it had been chipping away at her all morning.

That he was treating her like…

"Only remember, Gloria…"

Ugh.

"Wild Pokémon could come out of nowhere if you walk through patches of tall grass."

…like a little kid, or an apprentice. When both of them were the same age.

I know already! she wanted to tell him, irritated, every time he opened his mouth to give her more advice he had already told her probably a dozen times even before yesterday changed her world. You don’t have to say it!

She had memories of being someone that pounded him into the dirt with her team of Pokémon, being a person that won using wits and strategy. Not fists, like when they scuffled around and the winner was a toss-up because play fighting didn’t really have a set of rules or things to pick up on even though—she assumed, not considering too closely how it usually went when they wrestled around or pretended to be wild Pokémon—it was Hop that usually called it quits first and (Gloria believed) would let her win.

It was frustrating.

That frustration grew, now, when Hop lowered his arms as he spoke, voice earnest. Completely unaware of how patronizing he sounded to her now. He really thought he was only saying these things for the sake of protecting her—never mind that it gave him every reason to point out, as he often, did what an expert he was because of who he was brothers with. What _he_ knew that Gloria (until now, and sometimes well before), obviously did not, right? It was only his job to help her.

"I’ve got my Wooloo with me," he was saying importantly, and she resisted very hard the urge to roll her eyes at him. "So I’m ready for battles against wild Pokémon, of course."

She opened her mouth to snap out, finally at her limit that his dumb little Wooloo couldn’t even beat the other Wooloo out there, bleating in the tall grass. At least they were _wild_ Pokémon, instead of timid little farm-raised lamb babies like his own—

And just as abruptly she snapped her mouth shut. Her insides churned. She felt in her gut a violent discomfiting glut of unwanted emotion, following the preceding moment that was all plummeting-ice fear. Fear of what she’d nearly said.

Her face was suddenly much too hot. The kind of hot like when she remembered something she wished she’d never done, would always feel guilty about, or ashamed.

She couldn’t say what she’d almost just said. That was awful.

She knew what somewhat hadn’t ever learned as an older trainer, now.

She knew exactly what that Wooloo meant to Hop.

(There was no clear recollection in those memories of who’d passed the information along, or when—only that it wasn’t Hop. Gloria knew it must’ve been someone that knew his family, at least. Because they knew Leon’s and Hop’s ages were seven years’ difference, and had been able to tell very quietly that when Leon left for his League Challenge at ten, Hop had been so young and distraught at losing what might as well have been the only person in his three-year-old world that he became physically ill. For weeks. There was a powerful, visceral memory of how it felt to hear that the earliest, brightest childhood friend, the one had been so unshakable from the earliest recollection of him, at toddler age had gone overnight from Leon’s shadow to his ghost. That when Leon went on his Gym Challenge his baby brother stopped being able to eat, or talk, or do anything but cry. That his grandparents had moved into the boy’s home at that point because Hop’s mum was at her wits’ end trying to care for him, where Leon had most of that done before, and without him her youngest was inconsolable.

An older neighbor of theirs had finally brought the Wooloo. The man’s farm, as he explained gently to the strung-out family, was a lamb or two extra that year, over the livestock count they’d projected, and well. That younger one—maybe having a Pokémon partner might help him feel better, not so unwell without his brother?)

Gloria knew this story and it made her feel a lot of things that made her upset. She never would have to question as another trainer might, given time, eventually, to wonder about it. About why Hop’s first and least viable Pokémon seemed to always keep its place at the start of his team save for the lowest point when he wasn’t doing much more than taking guesses in his battles. The Wooloo, the Dubwool, it stayed after that. Even when it was so obviously his weakest battler.

(Gloria remembered a time that hadn’t happened. When Hop hadn’t the boy Victor, that, okay, it was hard to explain, but seeing Dubwool at the start of a match—it just helped clear his head, you know?

And no, Victor wouldn’t have known. He’d never—he couldn’t anymore—

Now it was Gloria that had that memory in his place.)

Gloria had a sudden thought that she knew things like this now that made her feel sick out of nowhere in random moments like this, like. Actually-want-to-vomit-her-guts-out sick. And it’d been half a day.

Would she have to live her entire life like this? Would she have to go through her entire Gym Challenge like this?

Knowing was better, and she knew that, but that didn’t mean it was _fair_.

Stupid Leon, she thought numbly, wincing as Hop yelled at her for straying without meaning to just bit too near the tall grass. The path she was ambling along was not quite straight, when she was distracted so from dizziness and lack of sleep, even if she didn’t know it.

Stupid, stupid Leon.

Her fists clenched at her sides and she didn’t notice it, even when her hands began to hurt. She didn’t understand some things that she remember. Or didn’t think she did, and—she also knew that it hadn’t exactly been that Leon was the bad guy.

He wasn’t the one that (never) did _all_ the things she was mad and sick and scared about. Leon was just the one she (he) was (never) closest to when (he) she (hadn’t) found out.

And if he did those things, it kind of, well it was never really on purpose. Or he’d been younger. Or dumber. Or hadn’t known. He’d mostly just tried to do the right thing.

Even if he hadn’t done some things, because he didn’t know how not to.

Or he’d had…help. Learned the wrong lessons from the wrong people. The way he’d at least (never) helped (no one) another child not to, if the Championship (hadn’t) landed on his shoulders.

It was just. He was still an _ass_ , okay? Gloria thought to herself, smiling straight ahead and beginning to grit her teeth. She was allowed to feel that way, when she knew that much, wasn’t she?

Leon’s was the face she was going to have to see in scarcely half an hour. He was the one she’d have to smile at, and when she thought about the Wooloo at Hop’s belt and about Hop and about why you didn’t _need_ people to adore you to be important, okay, that wasn’t the point—Gloria wanted to kick Leon in the shins and yell at him and tell him that he wasn’t doing either of them any favors.

But of course Gloria couldn’t. She wasn’t supposed to know this stuff. She couldn’t do anything about it.

Gloria stopped, blinked. A childish, stupid idea hit her then. Could she just…maybe, do something smaller to make herself feel better, trip him in the dirt on the way back home?

For real, she wondered, half-seriously, as the hazy shape of the station began to form at last on the near horizon. Just a little revenge that kind of wasn’t, because the one that got hurt bad was never really another child that wasn’t or wouldn’t be her.

Gloria didn’t _have_ to. And really she shouldn’t. It’d be stupid. But if she really _wanted_ to. Could she?

She was being ridiculous. Silly, even.

And yet.

It was easier to imagine tripping up her best friend’s brother in the dirt, pulling a mean prank, as something another kid like her would do. Easier than imagining what she’d do instead. If she were the age that no boy named Victor ever had been, or ever would. If she had Leon’s gift of a Pokémon already. If maybe even, she had caught her own already some time before.

If she had had the right time to train it well. Time to really think over what else Leon might have done. Really…really… _things_. Things that no one named Victor had ever learned about.

That no one else but Gloria now might ever know about.

Things you could do when your Pokémon was the strongest.

No.

Tripping, Gloria echoed in her own mind faintly, repeating the word to ground herself, completely aware that it was still only a pretend thing in her head that she’d chicken out on.

Probably. Maybe. Maybe not.

Tripping a guy that was wearing a big dumb cape was probably easy, and simple, even.

It’d be funny. Hop would probably even laugh.

Maybe Leon’s cloak would rip. Maybe he’d have to get another one, make sure all the logos on it from his sponsors showed nice and clean.

So he could get exactly what he was owed.

She could just trip him, she thought, with a yawn behind her hand. She probably wouldn’t. But maybe. Hm.

She wondered, this and other small unimportant things letting the anger fade into half-serious, half delirious contemplations. She wanted to avoid listening hard to the crowd she could already see, the mob forming a distant group down ahead of them.

Gloria thought idly, glancing down at her legs, maybe could undo her laces on her boots. Would that be enough to make a person stumble hard enough, if she timed it right?

Or would Leon be too tall for that?

Gloria raised her hand and yawned into it. Maybe. Maybe not.

Probably not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> goddammit, i know i made g-dubs think way too much in this one
> 
> gloria will have that scorbunny by next chapter's end even if I have to rip half the words out seven times instead of my usual four


	3. Wedgehurst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You don’t get to choose when the trauma hits you, even if it’s stuff you already know that you’re not supposed to.
> 
> Like the fact that most adults, they don’t think that much of children. Dismiss them out of hand.
> 
> Or that the grown-ups that do think about children, would treat you nicely…you have to be afraid of them the most.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was a bitch and a half to write, enjoy
> 
> *points up at the tags, back down at the chapter, then up at the tags, PAY ATTENTION* ok thank you & enjoy gloria’s steady descent into post-stress hell

Leon would be too tall for that.

Leon would be _way_ too tall for that.

Apparently everyone was.

Gloria was stuck at the back of the crowd. It seemed like everyone in Wedgehurst, or just about, had showed up at the station to witness the Champion’s return. She understood now that wasn’t a lot of people, but it was more than she’d laid eyes on at once. Her own eyes, at least.

It also seemed they were all gigantic compared to her. It was discomfiting. Feeling small, wrong, in her own body that hadn’t changed, in a way that was unfamiliar and scary. She was the same size she’d always been. She hadn’t felt anything strange earlier, around her mum or Hop, or her other neighbors familiar to her around Postwick.

But even as the feeling crept up, it wasn’t hard to guess why. Wedgehurst was farther from home, however short the distance in _real_ traveling terms. She didn’t know the people here by name. Not the kids, nor the adults, who were closest to her and crowding the back while children and teenagers gathered around at the front.

She had no Pokémon with her.

And now that she had memories of how it was being someone taller, older…

…more aware of how the world worked…

Things just weren’t the same as they would have been yesterday. Or the day before that.

—

She didn’t try to strain herself over or through the crowd to look for Leon, if he’d even arrived yet. She wanted to avoid any proximity that wasn’t necessary, to the bodies blocking her path.

The problem wasn’t the crowd itself. It hardly was a crowd, really: even with dug-up memories of a life erased as her only frame of reference, she knew that this was as about as tame as a gathering got.

It was the feeling of _wrongness_ , smallness. Being unarmed. Vulnerable, even if it was just people from the next town over.

It went against the grain of what the other (nonexistent) child’s, Victor’s, clearer and more recent memories painted. Except in those he wasn’t (would never be, had never been) a child anymore. Those memories were not so distantly far back as ten years old, when people apparently were so much _taller_ and another (never had been a) trainer would (never) have recalled later in life.

She felt so _tiny_.

She needed Hop to get here. He’d given her too much of a head start. She wanted to make sure he was okay and she also wanted him there to protect her, shameful as it was. There were so many adults around here, and…

And what, she thought. There was nothing Gloria could do about it except watch them.

She didn’t have a Pokémon.

The townspeople in Wedgehurst had already formed a small but enthusiastic mob that was now solidly in her way, dwarfing her. Her skin prickled at so many new, unpleasant associations that had been heretofore harmless in her observation. New casualties of so much childhood ignorance being blown away in a puff of psychic smoke (more like something torn open, stuffed in with too much else but it was her _brain_ ) and horrid Pokémon doing things to reality and her head.

Stuff she hadn’t _known_ that she hadn't known was quickly being replaced, bit by bit. By memories that stuck out of experiences that weren’t hers but in a sense were. Because she remembered them that way, as another person.

Some of that person’s memories were from a point of view she could understand, near her own age. Indistinct and fuzzy but relatable, and she trusted the person she was in them, the child that Victor had (never) been.

And then others from the baffling perspective of an adult.

Both sets of memories painted a picture of the world that made Gloria aware, now; far too aware, of what adults really thought of children.

The answer was not flattering. She knew many things about adults now that made her wary of even being near them in this small crowd. She felt targeted even if they were not paying attention to her but to their own kids, the little ones and the older teenagers playing and running and yelling for Leon or tittering anxiously on his arrival, how great he was.

Gloria was too uncomfortable even to be annoyed.

She knew or suspected the grown-ups here wouldn’t hurt her. It’d be stupid to do that, even for an adult, out in the open. Especially to another person’s child.

Yet. The fear and wariness and suspicion and distrust and anger at all these familiar strangers not paying attention to her at all still didn’t feel irrational. She felt defenseless, too exposed. She didn’t have a Pokémon. She was alone and surrounded by so many tall bodies of adults she did not, could never trust the same way again.

Gloria knew after last night that all grown-ups lied to kids. Kids weren’t worth the effort of the truth.

She knew after last night that most parents, on some level, believed having children meant that those children _belonged_ to you.

Gloria knew that most adults that weren’t parents didn’t notice children at all except as background noise that needed to be turned down. Adults tried not to spend much time being bothered by children and hated if any were around that were making a fuss.

She knew that was what it was called when a kid got upset, and couldn’t articulate clearly what was wrong. Making a fuss. Misbehaving.

Gloria knew…

She swallowed.

Gloria knew about adults that did notice children.

Not for…not because…not for good reasons.

They acted like they cared, some of them. And that was the worst part. They listened to what kids had to say. Some adults treated kids kindly without a reason, but it was impossible to _know_.

Why adults that talked to kids like her, if their words were complimentary, were so eager for conversation. Why grown-ups might praise kids her age for accomplishments, treated them like real people with feelings. Were they being sincere when they said those things?

If they called a child insightful. Called them smart. Gave them presents.

In Victor’s life, now long gone, never was—it was a near thing. It could have been him. It hadn’t been altruistic.

Other adults did it other ways, but Gloria was terrified most of adults like that, the idea of them being nice and wanting something for it.

She wanted to…

Gloria felt ill. She would never have known that, the way Victor hadn’t (wouldn’t have, if he’d existed) until much later.

Because of course it hadn’t been, never was(n’t) Victor who was in the wrong place in the wrong time when he made the right choice. 

That wasn’t, hadn’t, it never would have happened to Victor if Victor had been, instead of hers. But it happened to others. Not strangers without faces to put to the name. Friends, people she remembered, even if she hadn’t met them yet. People Gloria cared about because she knew them from years’ of memories getting to know them through another (nonexistent) person’s eyes. She didn’t know them yet as her Gloria.

But she knew what had happened to a friend like that. In the past, already too late, even now. Victor remembered having to learn that, feeling sickened and angry and wanting revenge, and Gloria wanted to cry and scratch at her skin until it came off. She didn’t feel right, felt dirty in her own body, like everyone was looking at her.

She hated this. She wanted—

Running footsteps. Gloria, on high alert, turned to the sound, and immediately, everything relaxed.

Gloria flashed a smile gratefully at Hop, as he finally caught up to her and made an easy stop at her left side, at the edge of town. Slowpoke, she thought at him teasingly in her mind, too happy for the words to be even a little mocking unsaid or not.

She hadn’t meant to leave Hop behind on Route 1. Honestly she wasn’t sure how it had happened. He must have assumed she’d be slower than she was, because Hop was like that, and right now she was too relieved to care.

“Hello, hello, Wedgehurst!”

She slowly let the smile ease into the more settled, automatic one she’d worn all day.

That voice. She knew from one sentence already that she was going to _hate_ that voice.

There was no way of seeing Leon from where she stood. Her vision was solidly blocked by the crowd. Instead she turned the corner of her eye to watch Hop watch the crowd watch Leon, who was probably showboating to maximum effect if all the cheers were anything to go by.

Hop drank in the people’s reactions to his brother, who was probably doing that victory pose unsolicited in front of the crowd, and she hated and loved and was scared for her friend by the look in his eyes. Like he was so full of joy, just from this, as if his smile would split open for it.

Gloria was scared for things she knew. Scared of how easily Hop trusted. How much faith he had in his brother. In himself, in her. In…

It was. It hadn’t happened yet, she thought feverishly, stomach rolling. Gloria would make sure.

She couldn’t let the kind of adults she’d been thinking about—couldn’t let them happen to her friends anymore. Some had already and oh god, she wanted to cry, but there was time in the future, it didn’t have to happen anymore.

If she were Champion, as Victor (never, now, except as a memory) would become, she could act. She’d protect them, they’d suffered enough from grown-ups or the world in general, right? Gloria _couldn’t_ let it be a certain friend again. Not either of them, not any of the three. 

That Gloria hadn’t met two of the children she was so concerned about now, could even avoid meeting them or befriending them, did not occur to her as a conscious thought. She knew abstractly it was _possible._ Not to be their friends into their older years if she didn’t want to.

She knew with her thoughts, fully aware, it was important to her that she should be. As soon as she could. She cared about them from Victor’s memories of knowing them. They were good people, and they needed her. She needed them.

Gloria was unbothered by the understanding she would probably always care for those strangers, had never chosen to. Despite the fact that she hadn’t so much as laid eyes on any of these friends as her own self.

All but one.

Gloria stole another glance at Hop. He looked serene. She supposed now, in this pocket of time, his life was at its peak happiness for the age he was.

His best friend was here. His brother was here. His soon-to-be Pokémon (not that Hop knew yet, but likely suspected) was a quick trip back down the road from being his, along with (he hoped) the endorsement he’d waited for, waited so, so long.

Oh, Hop, she thought.

Him, she would have to protect the most. She swallowed, forcing herself to turn away and back to the crowd of adults. She was frightened, wanted to let him be the one that protected her instead. It had always worked that way up until now. Hop was brave, he was confident. He knew what he was doing—

No. He thought he knew. She had to be brave for both of them, because Victor had (would have, if he existed) learned the hard way that some things Hop didn’t know the way Gloria did now, even if it made her sick.

Gloria wouldn’t mess it up this time. She couldn’t.

She wouldn’t leave him with.

She…

That person. That… _liar_ , that…

Gloria wanted to cry.

A part of her, something in her mind that had not been there yesterday, went further than that. A stray thought drifted through her head, dark and fleeting.

Gloria wished longingly for a moment, that all the adults would just die.

—

And, as if on cue:

“Your Champion, Leon, is back!”

Your Champion, Leon, is a lot of things, she thought, smiling, albeit with the wrong muscles of her mouth, thinking maybe all adults was too much to ask for, she’d settle for one or two.

Not like anyone would believe her. If Gloria listed out some less savory qualities she knew of Galar’s famous Champion. No one would buy a word of what she had to say.

Well. Except for maybe Bede. Whom she hadn’t even met yet, as she’d just turned over solemnly in her mind. Bede didn’t know her, and she didn’t know him yet, either, not as herself.

Still, Bede was contrary enough he might accept her word. If only for the sake of proving that Chairman Rose was better.

Gloria reflected that Bede would be one of a very, very few that would tolerate such talk about Leon.

Him and creepy Sonia, maybe.

Gloria itched beneath her skin. Gloria scratched at her arms, digging in with her fingernails.

She was fine for now, she decided. Just…keeping that stuff about Leon to herself.

She only wished Leon would courteously do the same, and please _shut up_.

—

“I promise I’ll keep doing my best to deliver the greatest battles for you all to watch!”

It just went on and on, like this was a tournament speech, not a man getting off a damn train. Gloria knew, if she wanted to learn things, she ought to listen.

But…

But Gloria didn’t want to. Three sentences of that voice, and Gloria already knew she’d had enough. Maybe it was better, to tune him out and cut her losses before something snapped inside. Made her say something flip, or worse, something that was impossible-sounding and wasn’t right now, not yet, would make her sound crazy. Something couldn’t take back.

His voice carried over the crowd, golden and full of inspiration that was infectious. Like a disease that made you want to be like him, which before today, wouldn’t have been something that made Gloria resentful.

Gloria understood, truly she did, why people hung onto every word. Leon had a voice that was buoyant, full of uplifting spirit. Every word carried an energy that was full of his natural confidence and magnetism. His voice was like hearing liquid gold dripping into a pan; it drew people in.

Gloria knew why another child would have admired Leon. Would have trusted the words that that golden voice had said, even in the worst of times.

But she was Gloria, she reminded herself firmly, refusing to pay attention as that voice kept on cajoling the crowd into throwing out more compliments and cheers.

She was not Victor. She was Gloria. She knew better now.

You won’t trick me, not twice, she thought spitefully at the Champion, as if he could hear her if she thought the words out hard enough. You can’t get me.

—

Maybe it hadn’t _all_ been Leon’s fault. What she remembered. What hadn’t happened.

Maybe Gloria didn’t care.

Leon was the one that was here right now, in front of her. He hadn’t seen her yet, had not been formally introduced, but she knew he wasn’t blameless, either.

She knew as well he wouldn’t think twice to lie to her, like any other adult lied to a kid. He’d lie without qualm to a wisp of a girl like Gloria, and still think of himself as her mentor in at least some sense, be proud.

He’d lie to Hop even easier. Leon had been practicing _that_ all his life. His brother would have believed Leon hung the moon for him.

That wouldn’t matter if Leon wasn’t too good at it, hadn’t been the one that Hop remembered teaching him all he knew, his god. Leon would say things now, tell lies, and Hop would hate himself because he couldn’t do the same. Couldn’t touch the sky.

Even if the truth was not strictly what he’d been told.

Hop couldn’t live up to every bold claim, every statement of posturing, every overconfident word. Victor hadn’t (never had been), able to do so either, though he came closer, but that bothered Hop deeply and not Victor himself. It was clear now, to Gloria, knowing what Victor never lived to find out. From the day they had met, Gloria saw how Hop lived always under that star of certainty, measuring himself by Leon, and by others, thinking himself the greatest and constantly needing to prove it, or to make it the truth if he couldn’t on the first attempt. It was so obvious now, with the weight of memories of all that was yet to happen.

He wanted to be like Leon, just like Leon.

She should stop thinking about it. Her vision was blotting white around the edges again with recollections of Eternatus. She couldn’t stop, thinking of Victor, thinking of Rose, a patronizing voice telling a trainer that wasn’t Gloria, _everyone deserves a second chance._

Maybe Leon was all wrong, too, Gloria thought, breathing slow until she came back to herself, blinking back the blood behind her eyes. Maybe Leon truly did need the admiration, for people to like him.

Maybe that’s why he would have stretched his common sense. What he ought to have known better, or had realized he had taken advantage of what a new Champion, a kid like Victor would not have (ever, now) been able to say with authority if pressured otherwise by a person that he trusted.

Just to secure the Battle Tower Leon had always dreamed of.

She wanted to hit him. She wanted to yell at him, as soon as he was close enough to hear, that some things were more important than being strong, that Eternatus had rejected him so violently for a reason.

Of course Gloria couldn’t do that. Gloria couldn’t afford to. She would be good. She’d wait until it wasn’t a waste of her only chance.

She’d take Leon’s endorsement, accept his Pokémon.

She’d smile for him. She’d agree to be Hop’s rival when Leon asked.

Because of course that’s what his younger brother needed on his journey, she thought scornfully, recalling all those little speeches as they’d been through another person’s ears and eyes. That was the solution, what Hop needed to become great. To be _pushed_.

Gloria would play nice, though. She’d pretend, if it’d make Hop happy, and she’d—she’d get to play with the Charizard, at least, she thought with a tiny bit of hopefulness poking through amidst her black mood. At least for one night.

But.

 _No more second chances._ Victor’s mantra, echoing at the images of his memories. Gloria didn’t believe that, it wasn’t enough. Not for Leon. That was too good for him. Her mind was made up. She didn’t intend give him even one.

For the moment, Gloria had to put up with Leon. She didn’t have to like him. 

No one was making her forgive him, even for things that never happened yet.

Fairly or not, if it was mean or even cruel, Gloria didn’t care. She recalled being another trainer, watching the world around her crumble under a storming red sky.

She knew what would happen not long after her eleventh birthday. Her hands trembled at her sides.

Time crawled along, only moving with that voice:

“I hope you’ll all carry on training up your Pokémon and never shy from battle.”

…

Gloria came back to herself slowly, disoriented. Her eyes would not focus properly. She felt dazed.

Beside her, Hop was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, trying to be seen over the crowd. It seemed his patience waiting for Leon to notice him was finally exhausted.

“Lee!”

Somewhere up ahead, Leon’s Charizard roared, recognizing Hop’s voice before its trainer did. Even that did not snap Gloria away from the part of her mind that was still bewildered and racing, with images of another trainer’s life no longer real. Strange flashes of things that made her so angry she wanted to scream and cry, but didn’t know how, she couldn’t do it here.

Somewhere, dimly, she registered the crowd before them parting, somehow knowing that they ought.

It was in that moment Gloria finally saw Leon dead ahead of where she stood with Hop. She looked upon Galar’s Champion, in person, for the first time. The first time with her own eyes.

She stared at him and the wild feelings stirred. Rational thought faded; something else inside of her was building. A sensation of an unfamiliar emotion that was visceral, ugly and sticking in her guts like blackened tar, making her lips pull around the smile she wore just shy of baring her teeth.

She saw Leon’s face go from stupefied to happy, seeing his younger brother.

It took him a moment. Like he’d forgotten for a second, that there was anyone in _particular_ he was here to visit.

“Hop!”

Gloria was hazily aware of where she was, part of her still occupied with the images that swirled hideously through her thoughts. An ugly feeling in her mouth like snake fangs made of words just waiting to be said, to tear someone’s comfort and security apart like she lost hers.

Don’t come closer.

“So, my number-one fan in all the world has come out of his way to pick me up!”

Too much. Too close. She listened to his words and wanted to tear out his throat. Wanted him to see what _she_ saw behind her eyes when she blinked too long, what she saw when he opened his stupid mouth, longed to ask him, how many bodies had the League made _him_ clean up near the dens in the Wild Area as Champion so that younger trainers wouldn’t find them and get scared.

Of course Hop was his number-one fan. Because you didn’t give him a choice, Gloria wanted to snarl, wanted to seize her friend’s hand and pull him back behind, run away, never have known any of it or come to the station.

_Hop._

Gloria watched Leon. Gloria 

…

Victor watched howling winds, red skies.

Nessa gasped. Victor whipped his head to watch in horror as her Drednaw collapsed, directly in front of the den. Said was still erupting light into the sky, and more of the rampaging monsters were coming, hardly recognizable as their original selves. Another Pokémon was already rising out to replace the one Drednaw had taken down in a draw and Victor stared agape before composing himself, reaching for the next ball at his belt for a better typematch.

“Get out of here!” he barked at Nessa, jerking his head. He did so without taking his eyes off the shadow rising over their heads.

“Don’t have to tell me twice. I’m out of Pokémon!” Nessa shouted. Already, she was running like her life depended on it, because it did. “I’ll get Raihan and finish up in the city!”

He didn’t watch her sprint past him toward the gates for Hammerlock, heedless of wild Pokémon cowering in the grass or dens glowing sickly red and beginning to brighten more every minute.

Victor shook off his alarm. This was no worse than he had dealt with before. He was the Champion and this was his job. His first priority was to defeat the beast before him, a rampaging Drampa towering to the sky, but after that he knew he had to find Hop as soon as possible.

Even Zamazenta couldn’t take on all these Pokémon on a rampage by itself, but it had a better chance than Raihan’s team.

What the hell was going on?

…

…

Gloria.

…

Not Victor. Gloria.

She sucked in a breath. Half of her was tethered to the present. The other half wrested back the memories and she wanted to scream, she felt like she maybe would—if, if she couldn’t make it stop, please make it stop. She couldn’t be thinking about that, now.

White heat was built up behind her eyes, making her sight go pale around the edges. Blood pounded a pulse behind her eyeballs, Victor was _furious_. He watched in real time as the blood drained from Leon’s face in the kitchen of their family home, while Hop kept sobbing at his side, apologizing over and over like he’d asked for this.

“Did you know this would happen!?” Victor screamed at Leon, rage making him unable to think, tears gathering at the corners of his own eyes, one hand curling into a fist as he

…

Gloria’s body shook.

She had to adjust her stance, dizzy, when she saw the world tip on a mild angle and nearly fell for a very long half of a second. Her balance was uneven and strange. Luckily, Leon and Hop were too busy greeting one another still to notice, no time at all had passed, despite the fact it that time was crawling, and if she could breathe in and out, just in and out,

The lack of color nearly blotted out her vision. But she could still see Leon turning toward her as she straightened, with that smile—

Victor startled, positively alarmed, not expecting Bede to whirl on him on him with a look of absolute fury. The other’s eyes were wild.

“I know what he did!” the Gym Leader snarled, rage all but flaring out of his pores, looking like someone ready to do murder. “ _Don’t_ talk about Rose like that! You have no idea what it’s like, you never—he only ever saw, he knew—I’d still _be_ there without his help, I—I—!”

Gloria felt her blood pulsing a rhythm behind her eyes.

Her name was Gloria . Gloria. She had to calm down.

She knew what the memories were.

No-more-second-chances-even-that’s-too-good-for-you.

She stared at Leon who had his attention on her fully, now. He returned what he perceived as Gloria’s friendly smile, the one still on Gloria’s face that she wore, politely facing him where she'd left her gaze facing upward.

“And these bright eyes over here... I’ve got it! You must be Gloria—am I right? I’ve heard loads about you from my little brother.”

She looked at him, bewildered and her expression remained unchanged. Inside she was uncomprehending. She had no idea how exhausted she looked, not having slept, and the acute stress of the previous night’s events hitting her all at once.

Who else would I be, she thought numbly, no real bite even mentally to the words.

She was Gloria. Not Victor. Gloria.

“I’m the Galar region’s greatest-ever Pokémon Champion—and a massive Charizard fan, too,” he said. Hop had obviously told him what her favorite Pokémon was. Gloria found that even hearing it from Leon, she didn’t care. The hate she felt for this man had exploded to a degree that wouldn’t have been possible for a girl of Gloria’s temperament just days before, barely contained beneath a veil of numbness that kept her from attacking him with her bare hands, merely staring at his face without seeing anything.

“People call me the unbeatable Leon!”

I’ll make sure they call you something else, Gloria swore silently, unable to stand there and listen to him lie except she had no choice, she had to do it.

He lied, grown-ups lied, they all only ever lied.

And that was that.

…

There were some more things said. Gloria didn’t remember what. The three of them began the walk across Route 1 back to Postwick, Hop in the lead and Leon following at a run, giving her some peace.

The sounds of Hop and Leon’s voices were fuzzy and indistinct, and around her, despite the sun, Gloria’s world was steadily growing darker.

Everything went hazy. She tried to breathe and let her feet carry her without conscious thought: one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.

She could do this. Gloria _would_ do this.

It couldn’t be impossible.

She’d find a way.

—

Things were blurry after that. She didn’t remember arriving back in Postwick. Her feet must have taken her all the way back on autopilot, arriving with the pair of brothers back to their home, and the small practice court in their backyard.

Hop was saying something about presents. Right, she thought vaguely, too exhausted to properly listen. This was the time when she got one.

Gloria took a deep breath, at least feeling better than before, feeling…not focused, but free of the panic that had gripped her. She’d need her wits, if she was going to choose her Pokémon, but it was hard to concentrate.

She knew what Victor would have picked. But there never was a Victor. She knew what Hop would soon pick, but also didn’t, not the Pokémon itself. That choice had three answers and she would write in the correct one, because Hop was too kind for his own good sometimes and his choice depended on her.

She had no Pokédex, she thought sluggishly as Leon released the trio of Pokémon intended to take both children by surprise, and likely delight: Grookey, Scorbunny, Sobble. Gloria barely watched them for the introductions, more concerned with the fact she had no idea what their natures were, didn’t even have the Poké Balls to scan for simple stats on her Rotom phone. All three balls were held loosely in Leon’s hand, where he waited expectantly, expecting Gloria like any other ten-year-old child to choose based on one of two things, her knowledge of Pokémon types or more likely, her instincts.

Gloria already knew how it would have been to make the choice that way, once. Now, the three Pokémon, their evolutions, attacks, type strengths weaknesses abilities limits—they were familiar to her, they were factors she was considering even as she idly watched them scamper in the yard as soon as they were released.

Each could be strong used effectively. It’d be a shame if she got a useless one because its battle style didn’t mesh right with its strengths.

She wanted her traveling to go quickly and to be able raise her Pokémon quickly. She wasn’t going to waste time raising Pokémon with bad natures. That wouldn’t help her get to the tournament faster.

It was just…this would be her first Pokémon.

She swallowed. Looking at the three.

Trying to guess.

In the end, it came down to the behaviors and her instincts after all. She recalled another trainer’s first impression, a feeling of familiar events repeating, as the Sobble dived at once for the pool away from the trio of humans right away.

More important was the memory of Sobble being a crying, shaking mess at the start. Gloria dismissed it out of hand and put it out of her mind. She knew Inteleon was powerful, but didn’t have time for coddling. She wasn’t impatient, but people called her blunt and Gloria knew both from people’s reactions and her mother’s gentle chiding that she very was bad at comforting others, let alone a Pokémon.

Hop was the one for that, between the pair of them. Gloria needed a Pokémon that wouldn’t be needy or afraid, ready to attack anything that its trainer decided needed getting hit.

The Grookey was tempting. Its final evolution, she knew, would (never) had been strong enough to give, never had given, but would have, that other child, Victor (there was no Victor) trouble. Even using a Pokémon with a type advantage. That was pretty solid for a grass-type.

Plus its final evolution looked like Donkey Kong—but Gloria shook her head to clear it. She couldn’t do this like a little kid. She had to think.

The Scorbunny was what finally caught her attention, because it hadn’t wasted time when let out of its Pokéball. It was already doing laps around the round, circular pattern on the practice court with its flaring bunny feet before either the Grookey or the Sobble had found comfortable environments to show off in. The Scorbunny had no trouble kicking up sparks already into tiny flares and seemed occupied wholly with that, practicing its aim, at least until the Grookey clumsily hit it over the head with a berry and sent it bounding off with an injured look for revenge.

The Sobble, not paying attention to avoid being hit while Scorbunny was still on the warpath, started bawling and seemingly prompted the other two Pokémon to remember they were making an impression, here, and were showcasing their talents but meant to be showing off friendliness as well. They awkwardly came down to comfort the little water-type and Gloria patiently waited. Her mind had already been made up.

Gloria didn’t need a friendly Pokémon. And as cutesy and frail-looking as Scorbunny and its evolutions looked to be, she didn’t miss that when it finally was called and took its place in the line formed on Leon’s command, there was an adamant gleam in its eye when it looked back at her and evenly met her gaze.

Gloria listened to nothing Hop or especially Leon said for the entirety of this silly show; she knew she was choosing her Pokémon first, and she knew it wasn’t much of a choice now, when it came down to it.

Kneeling down, she looked solemnly at the Scorbunny, making eye contact. It looked back up at her, snickering at her behind its paw in a mocking way, and after that held her gaze squarely with a blazing expression that she recognized—though, she wasn’t sure from where.

Better get ready, she thought to the fire-type mentally. We’re both going to keep at it every day until we drop if it’ll save Galar.

When Leon asked if she was sure, Gloria merely nodded.

And then, smiled a bit more widely despite herself—when the small, weak-looking little rabbit bounced up, with one paw raised, and delightedly met the hand she raisedin time to bump her their fists together.

She’d made the right choice, she decided firmly, taking the ball from Leon without a word of thanks. Hop stepped forward next and, as Gloria had known he would, wasted no time before choosing the grass-type Grookey for his own.

And that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> go the fuck to sleep, gloria
> 
> quick note: that there's no identity confusion going on & gloria isn't going to have to worry about wondering who she is or shit like that. anything from victor's POV is just flashbacks gloria sees when she triggers, and they're victor's memories so in a flashback where she sees everything firsthand, it's from his viewpoint and then gets disoriented when it ends and she's herself again because otherwise she hasn't lived any memory before like it was happening firsthand. especially another person's
> 
> and!! i know it seems the story's being super harsh on leon, but most of this chapter is gloria's thoughts. and she's tired and cranky & livid and also reliving horrific events blah blah. i guess i should clarify leo's not the main villain or anything, just responsible directly or indirectly for some…stuff. and victor's memory is very, very biased, bc he decided at some point leon's a shit brother. (tbh maybe he isn't wrong)
> 
> but i reread the chapter & thought it may be best to clarify leon may be self-absorbed and an ass, but at least he def. didn't do any of the uncomfortable sexual shit that's making gloria want to crawl out of her skin. and he's not a skeeze 
> 
> ~~probably. maybe. maybe not~~
> 
>  **ETA JAN 13:** accidentally put the part with the battle at this chapter instead of the beginning of the next one since the kids go eat or whatever after picking their pokémon and then have their little babby fight the next day. fun fact: it takes 50+ turns to lose to Hop in the first bottle. FIFTY. TURNS. and the dialogue is different but just barely…………


	4. INTERLUDE ║ ☾ ║ ⧖ ║ ☀ ║ The next day…  ▿

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being exhausted and scared doesn't necessarily mean being alone.
> 
> OR: a final night of peace into the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to move on to the Slumbering Weald from last chapter, then realized between trying to gloss over the post-starter cutscene, the battle with Hop, and then the Weald ordeal itself, I was not going to be able to fit even half of the content into one chapter without skipping some things that could use a bit of delving into. So instead for this chapter, I ended up just writing what felt right—which turned out to be an expanded version of the barbecue held by Hop's mum going into the evening and then the next morning before we see the player head to Hop and Leon's house again. 
> 
> As always comments are so appreciated, positive or not ♥ I'll do my best to reply to everyone that takes the time to leave any feedback since really, isn't that why we do this anyway?

Gloria didn’t remember much of the remainder of that evening, after she received her Scorbunny from Leon.

Not long after Hop picked up his Grookey the grown-ups had come out and announced it was time for the barbecue they had prepared, both Hop’s mother and Gloria’s mum planning the occasion together to celebrate Leon’s coming home. Gloria followed the women obediently to the house in a sleepy daze when they called all three of their children away from, as Hop’s mum put it, all the “trainer nonsense” to come and eat.

For all her tiredness, Gloria didn’t miss the way that Hop’s mother twitched at the sight of the trio of Pokémon Leon had brought: Gloria’s Scorbunny, Hop’s Grookey, and the Sobble that Leon had ultimately kept for his own to raise. Why the Champion intended to put in the effort to bring up such a young Pokémon for a spot on his team Gloria couldn’t guess; perhaps all three of the ones he had brought for gifts had been expensive enough to be worth the investment.

Gloria’s mum didn’t notice her neighbor’s frown. She smiled upon seeing the small new companions that the children had made in their new friends and partners, happily telling all three to go ahead and bring their Pokémon along for dinner.

(If Gloria were awake enough to think on it, she might have wondered, not for the first time, if the boys’ mum actually hated Pokémon. It wasn’t the first time that _look_ had crossed Hop’s mother’s face at the topic. Gloria never was able to put words to what was odd about it to her before; now, with more experience and vocabulary behind her thoughts, Gloria could have said that at best that the attitude Hop’s mum always took toward her younger and his vocal dreams of being the net champions could generously be described as…patronizing, discouraging in a further sense. It was in the dismissive way she spoke whenever Hop brought up wanting to follow in his brother’s footsteps, how she and Leon both had forbidden Hop from straying into the tall grass outside Postwick with his Wooloo, Pokémon or not, even to get started training early.

The next time Gloria were of mind to think about it she might have wondered what it was. If Hop’s mum just didn’t want her youngest running off like Leon had at such a young age to pursue a career that meant he would rarely be home, or if had something to do with the boy’s father, who was currently doing the same in some other region albeit with none of Leon’s success. Hop rarely spoke of his dad and always seemed rather puzzled when he did so, never bothered by his absence, like it was strange even having a father when Leon already existed and more was redundant. Gloria picked up from what bits and pieces he dropped over the years of his home life that the man sometimes wrote them, but not often, and that he came home so infrequently that Hop only recalled meeting him once and hadn’t recognized him then. With Leon in support almost solely of the family’s finances it was mind-blowingly lucky for both his mother and Hop that the elder’s first challenger attempt had ended in such spectacular victory; yet despite all the trophies and pictures of Leon (and only Leon) that decorated their home, and that the boy’s mother spoke highly of him and frequently bemoaned his absence, Hop’s mum rarely brought up the fact that Leon was the most important trainer in Galar and when she did it was rarely in a way that sounded positive.

Not to mention that Hop’s grandmother’s Purrloin wouldn’t go near the woman, even to get water from its bowl if she were in the kitchen.

Or that Hop had _never_ left his Wooloo alone in the house in Gloria’s memory, not even in its Poké Ball to rest.)

Gloria was too tired to be considering any of that. She didn’t see Hop as much more than a blur in her periphery, her friend unable to stop jumping up and down with overexcitement in front of the sizzling grill where his mother and Gloria’s stood searing meat and vegetables. Unknown to Gloria Hop was detailing every minute of their visit to the station to both their mothers, unconcerned that he kept repeating the same information over and over. Gloria’s own mum laughed at his pure energy, while Hop’s mother scowled with her hands on her hips and told him more than once to calm down and behave, not that it did more than go in one ear and out the other. Hop probably wouldn’t have noticed she was angry at him even if his mum started yelling outright; he’d learned to tune out raised tones and disapproving glares early and take the adult members of his family with their tempers in unbothered stride.

For Hop, things like that were simple. He _couldn’t_ be sorry for doing (what he thought was) his best to imitate what Leon might do in his place, to follow how his brother behaved and mirror his confidence. Hop upset far more easily when it came to getting an earful or considered it harsh if the words were milder, reasonable, even; something he’d actually have to carry on his conscience without brushing off knowing he was in the right because Leon always was.

Tonight, Hop had not the least bit of contrition for being excited. He ran back and forth with boundless energy between the grill and the practice court, where Leon and Gloria stood facing one another (or Charizard, in the latter’s case). Hop was happy to bring spears of food for them, delighted with his mum’s delicious homemade barbecue and certain they were too. Gloria didn’t argue and took whatever food Hop brought over from the grill side, smiling at him gratefully and waiting for an unwatched moment to slip it all surreptitiously to Scorbunny at her ankles. Gloria didn’t thinks he could keep anything of substance down if she tried. Taking bites when prompted by her mum or Hop when something new came off the grill was bad enough.

Aside from sharing her food—which, for how untrained and small the Scorbunny was, went above and beyond what a trainer needed to do to get a head start on earning its undying trust—Gloria wasn’t paying much attention to her first Pokémon the way another child might have as the night passed. She was too tired and mentally exhausted from earlier to realize this or feel guilty, though she probably would have.

Instead she spent the afternoon hours simply following what her brain felt was obvious, nibbling and picking at her food when prompted and otherwise ignoring everyone and everything else besides Leon’s Charizard, the first one she had ever seen in person. She stood shy opposite the tall Pokémon and its trainer on the court, and staring in fascination at its wings and tail. Gloria longed to touch the orange expanse of its scaly skin with her fingers but didn’t know how to ask the Pokémon for permission, so she settled for looking and watching the Pokémon watch her too. As the night went on and her exhaustion increased she got brave enough to scoot closer, sitting cross-legged on the court in front of where Leon’s Charizard had curled up comfortably to sit on its side instead of standing.

She didn’t really remember anything in particular of the Pokémon’s reactions to her, looking back, which was probably fine—it wasn’t her Pokémon, even if the species was the one that had caught her heart at the tender age of four. Gloria sat close enough to the fire-type to feel the warmth of its tail flame as the sun drew across the sky, and when it looked at her directly she found herself taking opportunities to mumble softly to it words she had no recollection of, later, but probably wouldn’t have been a good idea for anyone else to eavesdrop. It wasn’t just for that reason, though, that she was ever sure to keep her voice pitched low and nearer to the fire-type’s pointed ears alone, away from Leon, not caring for the Champion to hear whatever she ended up saying in her exhausted daze. She may have disliked, maybe even hated the Champion but none of it was on her mind now except when he tried to talk to her; her focus was on trying longingly to befriend with the great lizard Pokémon she had watched in battle that morning on her Rotom phone.

Only vaguely was she aware of anything else going on in the family’s backyard, though flashes came to her when she thought of it later.. Gloria remembered Leon trying to engage her in conversation several times, only for her to ignore him completely and keep staring at his Pokémon instead until he and one of the adults laughed and declared it was a lost cause. It wasn’t even a conscious choice of Gloria’s at that point; as far as she was able to think, the Champion wasn’t saying anything important enough to get her attention if he really wanted it in favor of his signature Pokémon.

The Charizard was used to children and yet had an uncertain air about it of what to make of her. The fire-type sniffed at her head curiously with its orange snout at one point while she waited, stock-still and wide-eyed while its tiny breaths tickled her scalp. Whatever it had caught scent of she’d never know, as the next moment the great lizard had exhaled a puff of smoke into her hair through its nostrils that made Gloria cough wildly and then laugh aloud so hard her stomach hurt, tears rolling down her face—perhaps the last laugh she’d get to enjoy with the simplicity of a child’s amusement for some time.

—

Time passed. Gloria became aware she was awake, without knowing where she was or when or why it had been otherwise. But she wasn’t afraid.

Gloria felt more bemused than anything at the lack of memory, body stiff and aching in her back but also feeling warm and comfortable enough and safe that she didn’t want to move to try and get up. She tried opening her eyes through the exhaustion all the same out of curiosity when she heard a familiar voice near her head, not managing to hold her eyelids open long enough to focus her vision until the third try. The darkness of the yard very slowly came into focus in the dim light of the moon, and it was by touch as much as sight that she absorbed was lying on a hard surface surrounded by people—people and Pokémon?—that were familiar to her or at least secure enough in her thoughts to not be scary. She felt comfortable and safe, and her eyes already were drifting closed again. Just for a minute, she thought fuzzily, believing she meant it as she unhurriedly tried to gather her thoughts.

Strange. Had she fallen asleep somehow out here, on the court at Hop’s house? That didn’t seem right. Gloria knew you shouldn’t sleep outside, not without a tent. Her mum wouldn’t have just left her out here all, either, so she must be around somewhere….

The voice near her head was hardly more than a mumble, speaking softly and steadily enough that it was like so much comforting white noise. It wouldn’t have escaped her notice that the voice was a voice at all if she were properly awake; as it was Gloria took a minute to realize it was Hop’s familiar presence at her side, chattering away in a very soft but breathless voice and lying close enough at Gloria’s side that their legs tangled together like when they were spread out on the floor beside each other to read a magazine. She blearily focused and saw Hop still looked wide awake (albeit with glassy eyes), and apparently thought she was, to; or else he was talking to the Grookey that sat curled up in the crook of his opposite arm. She watched Hop with his bright gold eyes for a moment, confused, trying to figure out what Hop was saying with so many odd words and syllables as he looked up skyward and recited things she couldn’t quite make out, before realizing it was the names of visible stars and constellations. Gloria relaxed, no longer bothered with that mystery solved, drifting near sleep again. Hop’s voice was soft and clear enough that her eyes were unable to stay open, wanting more rest.

Other details slipped into her awareness even as she was slipping out of it. Gloria became aware of feeling a soft press of rabbit fur against her cheek, a petite little button nose on a furred head letting out impossibly tiny breaths onto the skin of her face. Connected to that at the junction of her neck lay a compact ball of warm weight that rested between her head and collarbone. It was a bit uncomfortable, and yet still more so than not despite the weight—Scorbunny’s fur was soft and warm and she didn’t want to move it, it could stay where it was.

Gloria felt something leathery, too, draped over her side like a blanket. Between that weight, her own exhaustion, and her new Pokémon using her as a comfy pillow, she was all but held immobile there unable to crane her neck to the other side not occupied by Hop to see what was there covering her from the night chill

But it was all right…

This was all right.

Gloria closed her eyes.

If her mother helped her to her feet at some point, let Gloria lean against her as she guided her daughter securely for the short walk home, Gloria was far to out of sorts to be aware of it. If her mother got Gloria into her room and into her own bed, tucking her in with a kiss goodnight, no memory of it remained, not that night or the morning after.

—

In her dreams, at least a part of them, she was Victor. Not as he’d been in his own mind near the end, but Gloria’s own age and height, moving and struggling to keep his / her small legs pumping in pursuit of the target just out of distance until eventually the her dream-self was just Gloria as she was. Victor had started and she kept on in his wake running in absolute exhaustion to try to catch up to an oblivious Marnie, running herself and impossibly fast with how well she could navigate the alleys and climb up ladders inside of walls that weren’t there until she was already moving up, onto another set of identical streets upon the rooftops. Marnie herself was recognizable, more than that, from Victor’s memories, tall like the nineteen-year-old she was and either ignoring or unable to hear for weakness of breath Victor-then-Gloria’s wheezing cries for her to stop, please _wait,_ and desperately the chase went on in vain until Gloria was left to walk up to every stranger in sight and ask if they had seen a girl named Marnie running nearby, in the streets of Hammerlocke.

They all told her that it was time to go home. Gloria wasn’t supposed to be here…

Bad dreams didn’t have to be terrifying. Simple, upsetting dreams that weren’t the stuff of horror movies or flashbacks to traumatic events were still bad dreams, regardless of the fact they didn’t mean anything: Gloria woke up in her own bed well past sunrise and had tears in her eyes, which rolled down her cheeks noiselessly while only her chest shook with silent sobs that were easy enough to tamp down. She woke up with that desperate feeling that sometimes happened of wanting to go back to the half-constructed story she’d left behind inside her dream. To find Marnie and make sure the other girl knew that Gloria was there; they needed to stick together.

But Marnie didn’t know her anymore—Marnie never did know Gloria, didn’t even share the common thread of the trainer’s memories of being someone growing up as Marnie’s rival, her friend.

Marnie would be registering for the challenger’s cup, soon. She was still a girl not much older than Gloria herself, had never met any boy named Victor or grown to respect him and vice versa because there never was a boy named Victor that once slept in this room in Gloria’s home. It had never been his. There was just Gloria, now, they both were children, Marnie was a stranger that Gloria couldn’t let on knowing like a friend just because of a dream that made the loss feel so painful, so real.

That was all unhappened now. She was Gloria, not another trainer who never existed. A sobbing, hopeless shell of a grown-up that had (never) unmade himself and unwound his (nonexistent) world to a memory for another child to carry.

He had never met Marnie. He would never get the chance and he had lost too much to care. About himself, about Marnie. Even the frightened ten-year-old in what would have been his childhood room, a pocket of silent space without air where an energy pulse and Gloria understood in that moment that he’d traced _her_ through time and space to take the weight off his shoulders so he could disappear.

…

It meant a lot of things. But Gloria didn’t want to think about what had been scary, when it felt better to cry. Just for a minute.

She wasn’t Marnie’s friend, now. But she could be.

Soon.

To do that, Gloria needed an endorsement from the Champion. She picked up Scorbunny’s Poké Ball and her mum’s old bag, and walked out the front door after wiping her eyes and throwing on an outfit more or less identical to the one she’d worn the day before. She headed out for the day as she most often did, not calling a goodbye to her mother who was likely in the backyard or upstairs. Gloria didn’t intend to be rude, she was just focused solely on her destination.

She felt refreshed and better after sleeping. Oddly enough the sad dream and being able to cry made her feel better, more resolved. The sun was out and uncomfortably bright when she stepped outside, and for a moment Gloria wondered if she was going to have another weird freak-out again when she got to Hop’s house and saw Leon.

But with a glance at Scorbunny’s Poké Ball, Gloria shrugged internally. She figured if she kept her head (Marnie had always been good at that. Better than another trainer would have been, better than that trainer’s rivals Hop and Bede if that had happened), Gloria could surely handle Leon and his Dynamaxed ego today.

She was not technically wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope it doesn't feel like filler, i didn't think it was thematically very satisfying or fair to just skip ahead after the last chapter without giving gloria at least a little room to breathe if she's going to be able to handle herself and hop in the slumbering weald 
> 
> or maybe i wanted some softer moments to offset the angst, because gloria's not a bad kid or a hateful person, really!!! victor'd be a super jerk for doing this to her brain if he were in his right mind at the time but at least she has a fluffy bunny to keep her safe and warm at night ~~if she forgets to put it back in the ball~~ ヽ( ´¬`)ノ


	5. Rival Battle: Hop! (First Match)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two fledgling trainers on the brink of their first-ever battle, and only one can win. 
> 
> And so it goes.
> 
> (That she cheated matters less than what comes after.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried so hard and got so far but in the end IT STILL WAS OVER SIX THOUSAND WORDS AND THEY'RE STILL NOT IN THE WEALD
> 
> I hope that this is a good chapter nonetheless?? maybe not

“You spent the whole night with that new partner of yours, right, Hop? You two getting on all right? Understanding one another?”

Leon grinned, charming and infectious in that way of his.

“Maybe even built up a bit of love?”

Gloria wanted to roll her eyes…

No, rather, she wanted to _want_ to roll her eyes. But even she couldn’t resist the way her smile twitched a bit. She knew Hop. She knew that when it came to adults, even other kids sometimes, he could piss off people easily without meaning to and not care a bit when told.

Pokémon, though, her friend adored and vice versa. Hop’s Grookey was easily the luckiest of the trio Leon had brought to Postwick for its trainer’s choice, Gloria thought.

“Course I have, Lee!” Hop declared. His was wide-awake with excitement and his eyes were bright, though the faint shadows beneath them suggested Leon wasn’t exaggerating about the ‘whole night’ part. “Gloria’s made fast friends with her Scorbunny, too.”

He was giving her too much credit there, Gloria thought, wincing internally. She hadn’t let so much as Scorbunny out of its Poké Ball yet since the night before, let alone attempted making friends.

“Then listen up, new Trainers!” Leon said. He flashed them both a satisfied smile. “Believe in yourself and your Pokémon!”

Gloria smiled blandly and promptly tuned him out.

This part wasn’t important, she was certain. She resisted the urge to twiddle her thumbs as she kept her expression the same.

As soon as people started talking about friendship and trust with their Pokémon (she remembered how even another trainer would have had his fill of it, while being the one _giving_ the speeches), it just meant they were back in ‘grass is green’ and ‘water is wet’ territory. She was mostly assured whatever Leon said at this point wasn’t going to be much more useful than Rose’s speech the day before.

Gloria was a child and one that had had difficulty, always, respecting adults or people in general that insisted to tell her information she already knew. Even if they couldn’t know she knew.

She did not realize this of herself, exactly. Half the time she felt people were purposefully antagonistic when when they advised her of things she’d been aware of, if it registered consciously at all beyond a flare of annoyance or feeling disappointed that they had wasted her time. Gloria was was ten, and she was bored, and did not care most of the time that people were only trying to help on occasions when she came up to them in the hopes of overhearing something interesting and then walked away disappointed with only some piece of information she’d already heard.

All of which was a problem lying in wait, she would have cottoned on, quickly, if she thought about it. Of course she did not. She didn’t have the presence of mind required to know to think about it in the first place.

It would have helped if she knew it wasn’t necessarily the people speaking to her as Leon was now that were the problem, but Gloria herself. That it was not necessarily the worst of flaws but still fact how little she cared to listen to things that weren’t ‘important.’ What was important was arbitrary depending on her mood or what she remembered, and so meant she was rarely easy to engage with.

(Especially now. When what she remembered was what had never happened. What must never happen. The weight of it filling all she could imagine when she closed her eyes, terror gripping her and rage at random moments with the memories.)

Unwillingness to tolerate listening on her part was certain to become much worse an issue as she traveled Galar. Having the memory of doing it once, even from another person’s perspective, would mean learning the very limits of her patience. Or else getting locked up in a mental hospital, or sent back home.

Or wherever the heck Oleana might put a child out of sight and out of mind, and throw away the key, if Gloria were thinking that far ahead. Which of course she wasn’t. That changed nothing of the danger that lurked for Gloria or really anyone her age from whatever source they had, that hypothetically said too much, too soon.

Knowing too much was dangerous. Knowing too _little_ was dangerous. On their own, both things Gloria understood. But taking information she didn’t fully grasp beyond that to the micro level where it applied to her life was further than she had gotten yet, fast learner or not.

Gloria did not know to be very, very grateful that to her, smiling had always come easily.

—

Gloria—who for the moment was not thinking of any such things, or any things at all much, except what she should do in her battle against Hop—tuned back in to Leon’s words for just a moment to hear how far the Champion had gotten in his little speech.

It felt like long minutes had passed. In reality it was less than one.

“If you trust in one another and carry on battling side by side long enough, then someday...”

She kicked a pebble at her feet, bored though surprisingly not so agitated as she might have been. Instead of cursing Leon in her brain she thought of her Scorbunny a bit more, berated herself mentally for not using the tools on her Rotom phone she’d downloaded yesterday morning to check her Pokémon’s stats only to forget them out of exhaustion until she was trapped in conversation.

The accuracy of a Rotom scan on a mobile wouldn’t be great compared to a real Pokédex. But at least she might be able to do the math to guess her Pokémon’s battle nature for sure.

Gloria glumly recalled she’d had a good feeling about that nature yesterday. She could be right, still; but it was no guarantee her Scorbunny wasn’t going to turn out to be Timid or Hasty or something worse, no way to find out beyond a hunch.

(Gloria had no way of knowing yet that what she assumed to be hunches were actually instinct, and often correct—a way her mind put details of a situation and prior experience together toward making decisions or determining truths far more quickly than the conscious mind deliberated. It was too soon for anyone, especially herself, to realize this was the case. Even when she started traveling in earnest, and her hunches would turn out sharper than those of other would-be trainers at her level by far, she had no presence of mind to think she wasn’t lucky or at an advantage beyond another trainer’s memories. Beyond things like memorization, type matchups, _knowing_ things even if she wouldn’t often take the time to think out and apply them.

That lack of realization would hardly be called surprising. Early successes could be credited by others to beginners’ luck; by herself, to what she knew unfairly that others did not. Gloria almost certainly would never put together she had more talents than what knowledge Victor’s inexistence and strong Pokémon gave her until, or if, someone more experienced pointed it out for her.

And that was no surprise, either. Even longtime trainers, too infrequently, knew there was any difference between strategy and tactics.)

—

“…you might even become worthy rivals for me, the unbeatable Champion!”

Gloria kept ignoring him. Gloria wasn’t thinking about Leon, even if she was unwittingly following his advice in part. She was thinking about her Pokémon.

She had already resigned herself to the fact that, whatever Scorbunny turned out to be as a battler, she didn’t have it in her to release her first Pokémon. Every time it crossed her mind, Gloria internally fought back against the voice of reason. Remembered the way that her little Pokémon mere hours after they had met had so trustingly curled up along her neck to sleep the night before.

Anything else she tried to argue to herself about needing to not waste time, about what the reality was of how you won battles with things like smart decisions and simple math, just crumpled. Gloria couldn’t do it.

And if she’d been wrong, she would just have to make the best use of the tools she had.

…

It was nothing shy of a relief when Hop finally snapped Gloria out of the silence of her thoughts, and the background noise of whatever he’d been arguing about with Leon. Before Gloria could grow bored and restless enough to debate kicking a second pebble in the direction of the Champion’s shins.

“Just having a Pokémon with you doesn’t make you a real Trainer, you know,” Hop said to her, earnestly enough to catch Gloria’s attention.

She smiled crookedly at him. Gloria understood at once that he meant his Wooloo. Hop had sulked for as long as she could recall, about not being allowed to take it onto Route 1 to train. He’d never been given much by way of explanation from his family, which had to rankle now that Gloria could see things from a trainer’s perspective. Gloria understood it would have upset Hop’s pride, knowing his longtime companion hardly had more experience now than it did when he’d gotten it at three.

She also knew Hop was right, and it didn’t bother her to be reminded of something she knew for once if Hop wasn’t doing it to boost his ego. He did help to remind her that it made things easier, how people with Pokémon were many but also usually were not trainers—there was a reason, she recalled with her smile stuck in place, that the people that went by professions like office worker, or scientist, weren’t often seen wandering around the Wild Area.

Some did, of course. Enough to know the place well enough to hang around the glowing dens where wild Dynamax Pokémon could be found. They had their jobs but people like that were Trainers, reliable battlers.

And others…

Well, she thought, swallowing behind her smile.

Just because people didn’t see the bodies didn’t mean that others hadn’t tried.

Hop mercifully remained oblivious to this dark train of thought, too caught up in the fact that they _would_ be trainers, and that helped Gloria be…not excited, too, exactly, but resolved.

Not casualties. Not idiots, Gloria told herself firmly, steeling herself as she watched her friend. She and Hop weren’t going to just be kids that had Pokémon, but Trainers.

They would be real Trainers.

“Proper trainers raise their Pokémon up to be first-rate in battle, too!” Hop went on, and Gloria remembered to be grateful for him. That she had any friends in a place like Postwick at all. Let alone a friend like Hop that was kind, and bright, and _needed_ her, the way she’d needed him and would doubtless need him to be there for her again.

Hop couldn’t know how much he was help to her now. Even if he was grating in ways sometimes he hadn’t been before, thanks to…to Victor, those memories, some of which she couldn’t touch without wanting to die of embarrassment or get ill and upset, even sick.

It didn’t stop Hop from saying things like now, obliviously or not, that kept Gloria grounded before her thoughts could stray into places too dark to come back from.

Gloria gave him a grin that was cheekier than the one she’d managed before; competitive, even. She fully intended to do exactly what he’d said. She’d be first-rate, all right. She’d be the best.

Then the Champion’s voice interrupted them.

“Oh, and you think you’re worthy of calling yourself such a proper Trainer already, Hop?” Leon teased, both mocking and challenging in equal tone. He smirked, and stared his brother down.

Hop and Gloria held eye contact with each other for another long moment, frozen a second in time. Hop’s eyes widened, face flushed because, no it wasn’t like that. Not what he’d meant.

Gloria understood how it would embarrass him to hear that from his brother when, for once in his life (which, to be fair, Hop did it a _lot_ ) he really hadn’t meant the words as overconfident bragging.

Except Gloria didn’t have to read her friend’s expression to know he was incapable of conceiving, all brotherly banter and mutual teasing they shared aside, what it would actually mean to tell Leon that he’d been _wrong_ about that. Wrong about anything. Hop couldn’t even tell _himself_ with real conviction, that his perfect Leon could be wrong at all when Leon was the Champion.

The helpless, confused look Hop gave Gloria in that moment of silence made his own uncertainty in his own words that _he’d just said_ with his own mouth all that much more obvious and almost…scary, really. And she pitied him.

It was lucky, she thought, suppressing a shudder, that Leon being so oblivious when it came to people was never a lie.

If the Champion knew how to gaslight so well on purpose—with half the region already wrapped around his little finger—if he’d wanted more than what he’d managed already. What he’d started half-intentionally at home as a kid himself, when he’d raised his baby brother to be his personal cheerleader since before Hop could even walk or maybe think…

Well, shit, Gloria thought weakly. If _that_ were the case, Leon really would be a be a far more dangerous man than Rose. More dangerous than probably anyone.

But.

Being stupid, when you had that much power, that was dangerous, too, she reminded herself, stomach twisting. Leon had (never) been stupid, once.

Gloria was not going to give him that chance the first time. Not again.

For now Gloria offered Hop as much as she could, simple conviction in a smile; to show that she, at least, had understood his meaning. That whatever Leon said, Gloria believed him.

Leon wasn’t about to drop the issue though.

“Guess I’ll be the judge of that!” he barreled on, oblivious to his brother’s hurt (however small, however tucked away, just waiting for that moment of cruelty that once had never left all those gaping insecurities torn open) at being misunderstood so easily by the person he most admired and wanted to be close to. Leon’s voice still held no shortage of amusement, seeing Hop handing out advice to his friend. Like Hop had any right to, like of course he wasn’t a _real_ Trainer—

(As if it were something everyone didn’t do. Child or adult. Trainer or not. As if everybody and their grandmother, literally, didn’t have something they felt compelled to say when it came to giving advice about Pokémon.)

—and that was it about Leon, that was what Gloria hated, she realized suddenly. She hated the condescending, mocking air grown-ups like him had about them, when they were _experts_ and so a child’s naivete was considered cute, and even a kid trying their hardest was laughed at for getting ahead of themselves. She hated the way grown-ups teased, passed it off as a joke.

Then they got to punish you, too, if you got mad for not laughing along.

How was that fair? Why did people think it was?

“Let’s see how you handle yourself in a battle against your friend,” Leon went on.

He made the mistake of glancing at Gloria and flashing a mischievous smile her way, like they were both partners in crime for this little game against his brother.

“…if she’s up for it.”

Gloria blinked. Turned to face Leon when he spoke to her, if not by name.

Had he really just…?

“What do you say?” the Champion asked, giving Gloria a conspiratorial look. Hop—embarrassment forgotten, now, and all but glowing with excitement of a real Pokémon battle—grinned. What Gloria could hold as a grudge he’d forgotten already. Hop was ready and eager to prove himself to his brother, in a battle with his newly christened rival.

Leon smirked and leveled Gloria with the same challenging stare.

“Willing and ready to take Hop on in the first-ever Pokémon battle of your life?”

“No,” Gloria lied immediately.

The silence for a moment was suffocating. And she kept on smiling.

Leon wasn’t her mother, Gloria thought, wondering how on earth so many people were too stupid to realize it was dumb to phrase what should be demands as questions.

Gloria didn’t owe him anything. Gloria could say no. She had known that for years, long before (nobody named) Victor came into her life and (never) used her as the vessel to unmake his existence and his misery.

Leon blinked at her dumbly for a moment, taken aback.

The Champion composed himself quickly enough, though, and considered her, expression softening. Without much change in his own smile Leon found himself really scrutinizing this girl for the first time—the friend Hop had been so enthusiastic to tell him about in all his phone calls, little Gloria, a child that had seemed so ill at ease yesterday at the train station.

The girl that loved Charizard as much as Leon did.

The way she was smiling at him now…yeah, Leon figured, he’d have to keep an eye on this one. Either she was really skittish or there was something going on there he suspected ran much deeper. But all new trainers needed a helping hand.

Leon also remembered what he’d always done as a young, newly started trainer to remind himself that he could always handle what came next.

“Then how about I give you a spot of advice,” he said gently, and this time it was Gloria taken aback by his change in demeanor. “You don’t want to go getting so caught up in things that you forget everything you’ve accomplished till now. Take a moment to jot down what you’ve done, in order to save a record of your progress!”

Gloria blinked. That…wasn’t why she’d refused. He’d misunderstood her meaning.

It also wasn’t a bad idea.

It was like a light bulb going off above her head. Keeping track of things, what had happened to her, what had (never) happened (yet) to (another trainer), had happened Gloria and what would be coming next in turn—she _needed_ to keep track of that stuff. It was too much to remember.

Yesterday had proven that. Even though some things just couldn’t be written down.

Forgetting her anger, Gloria nodded vigorously and knelt to the ground with her bag dropping from her shoulders—pausing only to glance over at Hop, gauging his reaction. Hop waited impatiently with a Poké Ball in hand, but his face was grinning with the unspoken _Hurry up!_

It seemed she’d be battling him after all. But then, Gloria had come to their house expecting that, even before Leon neatly tied up the loophole she’d used. She didn’t mind, considering this time it was advice that would actually help.

Once Gloria saw Hop was okay waiting a minute longer, she turned her attention to her old bag and rummaged through, looking for a pen or a notebook before remembering what year it was, and that she’d just gotten a new Rotom two days ago so she didn’t have to write things down like a caveman.

She pulled out Scorbunny’s Poké Ball first, mindful to do what she’d forgotten before. She quickly opened the app she’d downloaded before for stat scanning, which was about as close as it got to free information on her new partner without a certified Pokédex.

She pressed the button of the ball to the phone’s NFP scanner and waited, biting her lip and acutely aware that the other two were waiting on her. Unaware that Leon was watching with a look that was inscrutable.

She lit up as finally, a list of information compiled on the screen and she heaved a sigh of relief to see the red text that spelled **Attack** matching opposite to the side where **Sp. Attack** was printed a muted blue.

Adamant. Perfect.

Gloria felt shaky and weak-kneed with relief. She would have worked with what she had—getting a Pokémon with a nature that wasn’t good wasn’t good, either, but that didn’t mean you had to raise it stupidly, you didn’t have to pick attacks or stats to make things worse—but now she had one less thing from the start to worry about.

The Scorbunny was also female, which made Gloria raise her eyebrows in mild surprise without knowing why. She’d assumed it was male, was all. There were no visible differences between genders of that species.

Cool.

Well, then. There really wasn’t enough noteworthy otherwise to record, about meeting Hop’s brother and eating barbecue at their house. Not worth saving on the phone just for memory’s sake, at least. Knowing what she needed to about her Scorbunny was enough, so when Gloria was finished recording her progress with the information about her fire-type Pokémon, she stood up again with a stretch and smile that was real.

Leon repeated his question. Asking Gloria if she was ready to battle.

She stole a glance over at Hop. She wasn’t sorry, but it also wasn’t fair. He’d picked the wrong Pokémon.

But he’d done that by choice. “Yes,” Gloria answered, and Leon ushered the two to stand at opposite ends of the practice court in the yard.

“Believe in your partner Pokémon!” Leon urged. “And care for them, too, with all your heart.”

Gloria glanced at Hop, who was still staring at her with a competitive gleam she recognized in his gold eyes.

He doubtless took Leon’s words to heart. He trusted his Wooloo. Trusted Grookey.

“Do those two things, and I’m certain you’ll learn to choose the moves that suit your Pokémon,” Leon went on, his voice probably meant to be reassuring, though all he got for his efforts was Gloria turning to him with a blank, unimpressed stare.

She didn’t bother trying to smile at him. He’d know as well as she did from her quick scan on the phone, that the Scorbunny he’d given her was so immature it only knew two attacks. Neither of those were fire-based. Grookey doubtless was the same, ostensibly to make things fair, but it wasn’t like picking a strategy with all of two choices meant knowing enough about Pokémon.

Maybe Leon sensed her lack of enthusiasm, because he quickly followed up with a closer. Unfortunately it was likely the only thing he could have said to flatten Gloria’s expression even more:

“And more importantly...to have a champion time battling with them!” the Champion himself declared, in his glorious golden voice.

God, Gloria thought, what an arse.

She drew the Poké Ball in her hand to her side, ready to lob it forward. She glanced up and met Hop’s eyes a final time.

Gloria knew, easily, what the best strategy was in such a simple battle. Gloria had—

(Nobody. Not a soul that was ever born. Because there was was ever a boy, named)

—Victor to thank for that.

Even if Hop knew what order to use the attacks best in as well, he’d assume wrongly that Gloria didn’t. He had no way of realizing she wasn’t now as clueless as the girl she was before.

She wasn’t sorry for what was about to happen. She wanted to win, and she needed to as well. She couldn’t afford to waste time or experience however she could get it if she wanted the Gym Challenge finished by the end of the year.

But that didn’t make it fair.

It was time to start, yet Gloria glanced again at the Champion through the corner of one eye, hesitating—she was unnerved to see him watching her as well. Leon had nothing to gain from this that Gloria knew of, even from her memories of another trainer’s having this same battle once before.

More fire to fuel his ego, maybe. Why Leon felt it was worth his time watching a couple of new trainers floundering around with basic attacks and young Pokémon was beyond her.

But if the Champion had the time to waste, it wasn’t her problem. Gloria glanced back at Hop, who was speaking in that way he did when he got worked up, throwing his entire body and his movements into the words like a puppet on strings.

“I’ve watched every match that Lee’s ever had! I’ve read every book and magazine he left behind at home, too!” Hop was so fired up, he was bent at the knees, hands clenched into fists upward as he stared her down, eyes sparkling. “I know exactly what to do in order to win!”

He did, too, was the worst part. Hop was clearly someone that trusted his Pokémon. Trusted his hero, his brother. Trusted his victory like a sure thing,

(like no boy named Victor had ever trusted Leon to keep them safe).

Hop grinned and smacked his Wooloo’s Poké Ball between his hands, elbows bent and arms held parallel to the ground all the way up to his chest. A declaration of a challenge if there ever was one.

And Gloria smiled at him and shut her feelings back into a tiny little corner of her brain where they wouldn’t stop her calling the right attacks.

It wasn’t fair. She knew that. He might have been able to do it, if this were her first real battle, too; like it was his.

Or he might not.

It didn’t matter.

It wasn’t Gloria’s fault that he had chosen the wrong Pokémon on purpose.

She tossed her Poké Ball as Hop threw out the one containing Wooloo, and before they landed it was as already as good as over. The battle, the Championship maybe, decided without regard for right or wrong in that moment, when each Pokémon materialized and the match began.

—

“Good effort out there, Scorbunny! Why don’t I get you all sorted?”

Hop was hanging his head still at the sting of defeat. Gloria was distracted, distressed at the Champion’s unexpected request in the form of an offer.

Maybe she hesitated a second too long to hand over the Poké Ball—hers, now, not his, she felt with conviction. Not Leon’s.

Gloria didn’t care it had been a gift. She didn’t owe Leon anything, not a damn thing: he had debt enough built up, from what was and wasn’t ever done or what he might do if she couldn’t stop it that as far as Gloria was concerned, he owed _her_.

But it would be too difficult to explain why. Too difficult to think of an excuse for why she didn’t want to let go of her Scorbunny, would rather go to Wedgehurst with Hop and have it healed herself.

Gloria wasn’t supposed to be confident enough to make it that far with an injured Pokémon. Out of options, she handed it over finally, noticing that when Leon gave her Pokémon back, now healed, he was looking at her more closely than before the match.

Had he been? This entire time? Gloria was startled that she didn’t know. Hop wasn’t holding the victory against her, but the sight of his unhappy cringe when she’d gotten a critical hit at the very end was all Gloria had noticed at the time it happened.

She was not sure what it was about Leon’s watching her now that made her uneasy. It felt too much like there was something…off and familiar in his guileless expression, which wasn’t quite different from before. Except it _was_ , like…

Like he was smiling the way _she_ was smiling.

“And, Gloria, you’ve got real promise!” he crowed, snapping her out of her thoughts and the crawling fear that accompanied them.

She’d cheated. But Leon couldn’t know that. Gloria smiled back at him.

“In fact, I’ve got a favor to ask you…”

She felt a spike of anxiety at this. A favor? Her brain scrambled through memories before he had finished the sentence, trying to remember, to figure out if Leon would have asked another Trainer to do something that Gloria wouldn’t do for Hop’s brother without the very thought of it something akin to the feeling of pulling teeth—

“Be a real rival to Hop, would you?” Leon asked her, earnestly. “Push him, and make the both of you stronger!”

Oh.

Gloria considered his words. Her smile faded. When she looked up at Leon squarely, her eyes blank and judging, it was deliberate.

But Leon was already turning away from her. Hop had cut in with a new outburst, apparently mad that she was getting more attention from his brother than Hop himself:

“I already want to get stronger and stronger!” her friend was saying. Hop’s voice surprisingly was even and composed for having lost his first battle, and he stood straight and still for once, yet radiating intensity in his words.

Gloria knew before he said it, what Hop was about to ask:

“You’ve seen me battle now, Lee, so come on—you’ve gotta let me take on the Pokémon Gyms!”

This was familiar. But something…

The hairs at the back of Gloria’s neck prickled. She had a feeling, very suddenly, that she was forgetting something.

Leon smirked at Hop, amused. “You? Join the Gym Challenge?”

The two began arguing—or rather, Leon began lecturing, and Hop stood still and listened waiting for a moment to get a word in edgewise—and tearing through the old, distant memories that formed today’s events in another lifetime, a detail finally sprung to life at the back of Gloria’s mind that nearly made her shut down on the spot.

Oh no.

No. No, no no no—

“If that’s really what you want to do, you two have a whole lot you need to learn about Pokémon,” Leon was saying, oblivious to the way Gloria’s expression had frozen, smile or not she had no idea, didn’t care, all forgotten. He was turning to her, next, and Gloria wanted to say something, anything, about what she’d just realized was going to have them go and do for his little runaround. She was ready to beg if that’s what it took to make him not say the words, but—

Her tongue was locked. Her expression was exactly the same and it wasn’t possible without paying attention for either brother to see her legs tremble nor her arms at her sides.

She felt like she couldn’t move for terror.

“Especially your friend,” Leon said obliviously to Hop, with a nod at Gloria. “Before you think about getting Gym Badges, best to think about getting a Pokédex.”

No please no no it wasn’t going to be what he thought not at the lab he couldn’t do that to her no, it wasn’t fair.

The mantra echoed through her frantic mind, and anything said was lost as Leon began explaining at length what a Pokédex was (or his interpretation of it, anyway; Gloria wasn’t listening, she could hardly think). Internally Gloria was in a state of terror that bordered on the crowd at Wedgehurst yesterday, and this time it was her fault.

How could she, he, Victor; how could _Gloria_ not have realized, how could she. It was. Nothing had never happened was the reason not on that day _but it was still he_ r.

Gloria felt stupid and naive and scared it was all she could do to stay standing in place, eyes dull and expression placed beyond her awareness, just keeping both feet planted on the ground so she didn’t fall.

It had been so long ago and. Victor, that trainer, he wouldn’t have wanted to remember so much later in hindsight, hadn’t had much to recall the first time, Gloria maybe could, maybe understood that but now it was _now_ it was happening and _she hadn’t remembered_.

She’d even been thinking about wanting a Pokédex for two days, even. Vaguely had remembered another trainer’s impressions of Magnolia, somewhere distant, somewhere unimportant in the thoughts that swirled like so much water with the others.

And Gloria had forgotten completely where the actual Pokédex came from that Victor received. Before he and Hop (had never anymore) arrived at the Professor’s house.

She stifled a real sob that neither Hop nor Leon heard, having just finished up their conversation. Gloria and Hop had to go to the lab in Wedgehurst before endorsements.

“Right, right, we get it... Pokédexes, then!” Hop said, oblivious to his best friend’s plight. Hop was hardly better at reading what people hid than Gloria normally would have been, and he was utterly restless to be within reaching distance of his lifelong dream only to have it denied with another obstacle.

Of course he wasn’t going to hesitate. Of course he wasn’t going to look at Gloria’s face and see that Gloria wasn’t there.

“We’re on it! Looks like it’s off to the Pokémon Research Lab for you and me, Gloria!”

No, please, she thought. Gloria didn’t want to go there. Gloria didn’t want to.

Gloria didn’t want to meet—

“That’s the kind of enthusiasm a Trainer needs!” Leon told his brother approvingly with a nod. “I’ll let the professor know to expect you.”

It won’t _be_ the professor, Gloria wanted to scream after him, struggling to breathe or to move her legs or grab his arm before he headed for the fence, to do anything. Magnolia isn’t who gave it to him, never gave a Pokédex to Victor it was someone else, please Leon _you know her_ Gloria wailed inside, I don’t _want_ a Pokédex, don’t send us there, don’t let her _see_ —

But Leon was gone, his Charizard soaring above and moving faster than his shadow. And Hop was oblivious, chattering about the first page of his legend as Gloria trembled, at the horrid thoughts of what she saw like nightmares in motion in the last memories, she ( _he_ ) had had, of that place, that Lab, and that person that _liar_ that creep and then Hop—

And all this if she’d just remembered. This was her

…

was his fault, Victor hadn’t noticed hadn’t seen. And the knowledge left him struck numb, utterly numb. With horror. He’d _left_ him there.

With—

**_*CRASH*_ **

Gloria was startled enough to nearly jump out of her skin.

Hop raced ahead, expression going wide-eyed and fearful himself as he yelled something and sprinted down the road toward the sound. Gloria, freed of her trance and feeling weak like she’d survived almost being drowned, ran doubly hard to catch up automatically at his heels.

R…Right.

This part first.

Gloria would. She’d have to. Deal with—Gloria cringed—she’d just have to wait, and deal with _Sonia_ when she got there.

But for now they had a Wooloo to not-quite-save and a hero’s ghost to meet. If anyone could give Gloria the strength to make her legs walk to that lab, or at least some worse fear by comparison…it’d definitely be Zacian, she thought feverishly.

Oh, god. Gloria bit back a frustrated noise like a scream, at how unfair it all was, why Leon would let it happen that way. She wanted to vomit. She was angry enough to rip out her skin, to have to find out this way that some traitorous part of her had had even _that_ much faith in him.

_No-more-second-chances-even-that’s-too-good—_

Stop it! she thought forcefully, when she nearly tripped over her shoes and fell.

Hastily Gloria swiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She ran clumsily, one foot in front of the other, toward the waiting open gate and a worried Hop who was concerned for all the wrong reasons but it wasn’t, it’d never been his fault.

No, Hop couldn’t see her cry.

Gloria wanted to go home, she _wanted_ to cry, she did. She wanted her mum.

Instead she sprinted toward the hanging-open gate she knew was waiting and dried her face, did her best to breathe. It was either that or let her best friend go alone. And she was maybe a liar and a cheat now, and she hadn’t asked for this, no, because who would? But Gloria wasn’t a monster.

Stupid, she thought. About herself, for forgetting. About everyone.

Stupid, _stupid_ Leon…

…

Oh, god, she wanted her mum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thx u dear readers for reading as always ♥ comments are soooo loved and cherished that you cannot possibly know what they mean to me, even negative ones!! 
> 
> at the end of the day i like people to write things that make me think. and then vice versa, and so on
> 
> anyway come bug me on twitter (same @sinnerrific, though I'm rarely online) or discord (see: twitter DMs) if you wanna talk Pokémon headcanons or _disturbing_ Pokémon headcanons or hell just general Sword/Shieldnannigans, and i'll get connect with ya when I can! (I don't bite, just eat a lot of dead doves, so plz be an adult human is all I ask)


	6. Slumbering Weald

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two children follow the cries of a Pokémon and its howling, a roar summoning to what lies beyond the fog.

“The gate’s open! And the Wooloo that was there…”

Gloria stared at the open gate while Hop panicked. Her own eyes blank, waiting.

“It was tackling the fence pretty hard earlier,” Hop went on, his voice growing more unsettled the longer he spoke. “You don’t think it actually broke through there, do you?”

Gloria wasn’t sure, really. She didn’t know how a Wooloo could even _make_ such a loud noise, whether it had barged through on its own or not. There was certainly no sign of it now.

“But it’s off-limits! Nobody’s supposed to go in there!”

Gloria emerged from her half-conscious deliberations—and her own fear, following Leon’s departure and the errand he’d set for them, that incessant itching beneath her skin—at the tone of Hop’s voice. She focused on him fully, was surprised to see Hop looking hard-faced and solemn. He met her stare with knit eyebrows, pinched almost in a scowl.

“I remember the professor’s granddaughter went in once,” Hop began, his voice low and urgent, “and she came back in a real state…”

Gloria’s lips parted the slightest bit upon hearing this, eyes widening. She (he) hadn’t remembered that story (never told, not to a boy named Victor) and was shocked that such an important detail had ever slipped another (no other) trainer’s memory.

It…It must have been a long time ago. For him to have forgotten.

If he had ever been here instead of Gloria, standing at the gate where she stood now.

Gloria wondered. Even as her heart hammered again just from the mention of that woman. Why would Sonia have gone into the Weald? How long ago?

It—It couldn’t have been that far back, she thought, sweat beading on her neck, not if Hop remembered. If Hop was the one telling Gloria for the first time. Gloria’s stomach sank.

(Another trainer might have caught the then-assistant’s interest, later, held it longer; but only until he slipped out of her reach to the heights of Wyndon and the title Leon held. But that never happened; it couldn’t this time, not again. It couldn’t be Hop instead. If no boy named Victor was out of the picture, out of Postwick—Gloria would find some way. She’d do anything.)

Of course Hop knew Sonia, already, Gloria acknowledged anxiously, even if Gloria had never met the woman herself. That made sense, wouldn’t it? Maybe Leon himself hadn’t come home often after his Gym Challenge, but Sonia had gone on hers at the same time. She’d been Leon’s…

Well, to call her a rival might have been generous. From what Gloria recalled, as another trainer knew of the would-be Professor, of his-now-Gloria’s nightmares—Sonia seemed very much the type to call a cab home at every opportunity. A girl who at Gloria’s age would have preferred the comfort of her own room over camping in the Wild Area.

(A thought that made Gloria’s own skin crawl in discomfort, _hating_ the fact that someone like that creep of a woman could have ever been Gloria and Hop’s own age. Hating that people like that didn’t just—happen. That they still had to be human, had to grow up and be kids first like anybody else.)

Gloria had to wonder what might have compelled a girl like the Sonia she knew-but-not-quite- _knew_ , from all those memories, the same person if some years younger, to go hiking on through the Slumbering Weald. In a brazen defiance of common sense and every rule beaten into hers and Leon’s skulls.

By Hop’s family, at least, if not Sonia’s own. Because Sonia was from Wedgehurst, not Postwick; but even if Magnolia wasn’t smart enough to know. All the grown-ups in Postwick had told Gloria and Hop and the other children in their town and even one another, since _forever,_ that the Slumbering Weald was off-limits. Because it was dangerous.

“And that was nothing compared to the earful she got from the professor afterward!”

Well, that didn’t help. Gloria didn’t have to keep smiling now and struggled not to yell at him, to clarify what that even _meant_. If getting beat up by wild Pokémon or something worse what he was talking about, or if a ‘real state’ to him was so trivial it amounted to less somehow than that woman getting scolded by her mum—

She bit her tongue. He wouldn’t know, Gloria understood, deflating. Hop was Hop. He’d break his bones a hundred times, and fear more every time the scolding he got for it to return home that way. To be called to count for being reckless without a good reason. Hop’s confidence was unshakable; he took losses in stride. And that only meant he’d break to tiny pieces of himself before he caved on anything that made up the foundation of his worldview.

But he wasn’t going to break to little pieces today. Instead Hop was turning that uncharacteristic, somber glare on Gloria. And his question was as good as asked before he voiced it.

“Gloria…” He didn’t have to look in the direction of the broken gate.

Gloria knew.

She knew what his heart was telling him, what hers wouldn’t have hesitated to answer in tandem a day or so befor.

“…what do you say?”

She knew what the right answer was. She knew what another trainer would have said.

And yet—

“I don’t know…” Gloria heard herself mumble instead. Her eyes cast downward to avoid Hop’s gaze directly. She resisted the urge to fiddle with her sleeve.

She didn’t know _why_ she said it. Why she didn’t agree when it was the only choice to make. Especially considering hers and Hop’s fate later might just hinge on it.

Not until a moment or so after, when the two of them stood in silence. Bits of broken memory ticking at the back of her thoughts coalesced into a series of events that had (never) happened in a way that made sense, along a scale of time that matched her own…

If…if Leon hadn’t (ever) needed to come after them. If the better part of an unhappened day had not (ever) passed in the stillness of sleep, unconscious in the fog in the Weald.

Would it have been Magnolia? Not _her?_

Then. Could they (hypothetically: because they weren’t, never had been. but _hypothetically_ ) have avoided, meeting—

No, not them. They hadn’t, wouldn’t have, never could, because. They weren’t. Not the ones they never had been.

But Gloria was.

…

…

But Gloria was Gloria, too. It was. It wouldn’t make a difference.

Sonia already knew Hop. Gloria couldn’t change that, and more was at stake. They ought to meet the legendary hero that had waited so long, for them.

There was—There was time, Gloria thought. She just had to figure out how.

And when Hop stared at her, shaking his head, even the terrible fear in her gut she felt about meeting _her_. That awful girl, that woman…

(Whose eyes haunted Victor’s memories in hindsight, at the recollection of them landing on him. Inevitably. At every city. Like clockwork: every coincidental meeting, every time their paths had crossed, every time she had some ‘question’ about her grandmother’s research that perhaps some child from a backwoods town like Postwick could enlighten her on. And why would he suspect a thing, back then? His reasons to realize that blind trust had been misplaced wouldn’t come till later.)

…even that fear crumbled, in the face of his resolution.

She wondered for a moment, maybe, if Victor hadn’t really done anything more with his memories than made Gloria’s life knowing the shadow of his into a living hell she couldn’t change.

But she’d—she’d try, she thought, swallowing, meeting Hop’s eyes again with a look she hoped expressed that yes, she understood. What he was going to say next. That it was fine.

She’d do it. She’d go with him. Someone had to.

(And Gloria understood, what Victor could never have made his peace with, if he’d ever been. That maybe some things, there just wasn’t any choice. As if it was already decided. The way being a Trainer didn’t always mean being able to pick your battles, no matter how you kept your head down and watched your steps.

Not even when it was a fight you were certain of losing.)

“Right...” Hop murmured back, finally. Sounding put off, but not deterred. “No one wants to get in trouble, least of all me.”

He wasn’t being coy. He meant it. He stared at Gloria, his face hard, and she knew what he’d say next, what her choice was going to be when he made the ultimatum.

Like it always would have been.

“But deep down you want to save that Pokémon, too, don’t you?”

Of course she did, Gloria thought, fighting back a lump in her throat as she mustered as much of a smile for her best friend as she could. Not the Wooloo, maybe, but Zacian. Zamazenta.

Hop. Bede. Marnie. Eternatus.

Galar.

_I want to save all of you._

There had to be a way, she thought, staring at Hop’s face. He didn’t know how to give up. Gloria envied that, even if it hurt him.

There had to be a way to do this right.

Hop smiled back at her. Nervous. Excited. Drawing courage from her, and Gloria didn’t even realize it, for all she was having to do the same from him.

“Hope you’re ready for anything,” Hop said, the barest hint of a tremble in his voice, “because we’re going in, Gloria!”

At least they wouldn’t die, she thought. Not now.

“Come on, Gloria! We can’t just leave that Pokémon on its own!”

If even a trainer as worthless as Sonia could have made it through and back in one piece, Gloria reminded herself, their chances were better, even with novice Pokémon. And Zacian wanted them to come. Didn’t it?

A quiet mix of resignation and foreboding settled calmly between her ribcage and her stomach, as she followed Hop through the forbidden gates leading into the Slumbering Weald.

And if another trainer, another child, had been able to do it. If Gloria…wasn’t, and Victor was, and he had managed.

Knowing there was nothing she could do for it, Gloria firmly decided: well, then, she and Hop wouldn’t die in there, either. And she could handle whatever came their way after when it did.

Probably.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

—

She and Hop made their way through the fog and the tall grass, carefully, carefully. There wasn’t much need to be overcautious, though. The Pokémon here were weak, which made sense. The memories of another trainer included some battles with the likes of wild Skwovet and Rookidee, while following the most even-level earth they could toward the sounds of a Pokémon’s roaring howls that echoed clean through Gloria’s ears into her soul.

Guess there was nothing really like hearing it for herself, with her own ears, she thought, shuddering in the fog. She kept her gaze focused on the road ahead and snapped it back to Hop whenever he went too far from her, battling small-ish Pokémon along the way.

The battles were simple, and Scorbunny was gaining experience fast. She knew from (another trainer’s) experience that it wasn’t hurt more than ruffled fur and perhaps a scratch, so it surprised her when she grabbed Hop’s arm again to keep him close after a second Skwovet and found him reaching back to pluck the Poké Ball from her hands.

“Doing all right there, Scorbunny?” Hop asked, voice friendly and kind. She watched, too surprised to react or intervene, as he applied the medicine applicator to the button of Scorbunny’s Poké Ball directly, letting it take effect with a tiny pitched-up draining noise for one bottle and then a second to indicate the Potion and Ether he’d pulled from somewhere had taken effect. He handed the Poké Ball back to her after inspecting it another moment, adding, “Let’s be sure you’re in tip-top shape.”

She took it back from him, cradling the ball in her hands with nothing to say. Hop didn’t quite smile at her, but he seemed pleased nonetheless to have been of help.

“There,” he declared, satisfied as Gloria tucked the Poké Ball back to her belt. “Now let’s push on!”

—

It was easy to notice when the small, manageable patches of grass gave way to something almost like a path, mossy and damp. It was impossible to see more than a meter or so to either side, but they raced ahead at the sound of another howling roar of a hero’s ghost—though that was only for Gloria to understand. Hop’s only concern was the Wooloo, which even now might be in graver danger than before if some angry Pokémon was crying out with such ferocity that it felt like the sound must carry for kilometers in all directions.

The fog rushed in all at once and Gloria tensed, preparing.

“This is mad...” Hop said, unsettled. “I can’t even see my own hand in front of my face! I think I get now why this place is off-limits...”

He gritted his teeth. Gloria kept her eyes sharp, watching, listening, but the fog. It was just too dense to see a single thing besides Hop doing the same in front of her, glancing around with growing desperation in all directions.

Then.

Too late.

The sound registered.

Steps.

The two young Trainers in one swift motion spun, facing the same direction toward the approaching Pokémon, towering over them like a living mountain instead of a beast. The fog had loosened just enough for them to see it approach them without hurry. Menacing.

Hop flung his arms up involuntarily, panicked.

“What in the—?!” he gasped.

Gloria’s eyes were as wide even as she kept her gaze sharp, disbelief etched in every line of her features as she absorbed exactly what she was seeing.

And what she wasn’t.

“Za—” she began to stammer out, stupidly, dumbfounded.

But she was cut off before she could finish or Hop could ask.

 **“Grrrrrriiieeeld!”** Zamazenta howled at them, the ethereal roar freezing the children’s souls. Hop lowered his arms and simply stared agape.

Golden, lightless eyes—one marred by a white, heavy scar running diagonally over the upper half—bore into Gloria’s own.

It roared again.

—

Gloria didn’t hesitate.

Her body was moving, before she had time to think.

She pivoted forward, hardly a step, enough so her own body stood shielding Hop’s automatically. She moved using the strength in her legs against the ground and into her side, all but pushing Hop away at a hard left and out of Zamazenta’s field of view.

The rest of her senses honed in, on the looming threat of the four-legged beast crying out ahead of them.

This wasn’t right, some part of her brain had registered, flummoxed, panicking. This wasn’t Zacian!

The rest of her was faster. Gloria didn’t need another trainer’s memories.

Not to seize the Poké Ball at her belt and hurl it forward.

Zamazenta was a Pokémon. A legendary Pokémon, but a Pokémon all the same. Gloria knew what to do when wild Pokémon attacked.

Unfortunately, her knowing what to do stopped, the moment the Poké Ball popped open and her tiny Scorbunny appeared. The little fire-type stood bouncing determinedly on its small feet in the face of the towering monolith, what was now the wraith of that which had been the Hero of Many Battles.

Victor might never have been at this point, but she’d done a fine job of making his first mistake again.

—

Gloria realized too late that she’d messed up. That she’d picked a losing battle, even if it wasn’t really a battle she ever picked.

She tried to fix her mistake. She _did_ —tried to call her Pokémon back, to run, to get them out of there like another trainer hadn’t known to do.

Only to find the ball that held Scorbunny had gone suddenly cold and lifeless in the fog. It wouldn’t respond when she gripped it or slammed her fingers against the capture mechanism, and she gaped down at it in her hands in horror for a split second in disbelief.

Trapped, she whipped her head up again. The two Pokémon, Zamazenta (why was it Zamazenta?) and Scorbunny, faced each other, two of the three shapes besides herself that Gloria could make out in the heavy fog.

Scorbunny looked no less determined than it had in the face of Hop’s own team of rookie Pokémon. But that didn’t mean anything. Not if what had been true of Zacian in Victor’s memories was still true now.

Zamazenta’s gaze was fixed upon her…

And Gloria remembered, swallowing her fear. Being a Trainer didn’t mean being able to pick her battles.

Even if it was a battle she knew she’d lose.

I’m sorry, Scorbunny, she thought, scrunching her eyes shut to avoid that golden gaze as she ordered it to use an attack, any attack. Already knowing it wouldn’t matter in the end.

—

Hop stood at her side again, refusing to stay out of the way where she’d hip-checked him hard to the other end of the path out of Zamazenta’s range.

He didn’t seem angry, only agape. Gloria’s Scorbunny tried tackling Zamazenta and the beast only seemed to flicker before their eyes.

“Wha—?! The move had no effect on it?!”

Gloria gritted her teeth and tried again.

The fire passed through Zamazenta’s visage as easily as Scorbunny’s furry body had not moments before. It was like attacking a mirage.

All she could do was order her Pokémon to make ripples in the reflection, of a restless statue’s anger through the rivers of time.

Zamazenta roared again, and Gloria paled as she saw its golden eyes go white clean through.

“Gloria!” Hop screamed, flailing blindly at her side. “I can’t see anything! You OK?!”

She fumbled for his arm, squeezed his wrist, all the while, wondering as her heart hammered away. Why hadn’t he released his Pokémon? Why wasn’t he helping her?

_Doing all right there, Scorbunny?_

_Let’s be sure you’re in tip-top shape._

Gloria grit her teeth, resisting the tears welling at the corners of her eyes. His Pokémon must have fainted on the way, she realized—Hop was concentrating too hard on finding that Wooloo, he wasn’t battling as efficiently as she had been in the patchy grass.

And to cover his mistake and ease her mind, of course he’d used the last medicines he had on Gloria’s instead. He’d known they wouldn’t get another chance to find the lost Pokémon they’d come to save if they turned back.

Zamazenta’s gaze was fixed upon her…

She tried one last attack. There was no effect.

It was as good as over—

She could barely make out the shapes of the two Pokémon in the fog, but she saw Zamazenta open its mouth to howl a final time.

But no sound came out.

Instead, the fog rolled over them. But it was different. This time, the damp air blanketing them was so thick Gloria’s eyes widened as she realized she _couldn’t breathe_.

“I can’t see anything!” Hop gasped out, the sound wrenching something awful in Gloria’s chest as she tried to glance desperately between her Pokémon and her friend.

And then, a shape in the white fog smothering them all took form, lunging directly at the two children and sending Gloria’s Scorbunny like a ragdoll tumbling back in her direction.

Gloria would have yelled herself, if she had the air. But Hop’s cry of distress was enough to fill her mind before blacking out:

“Uwaaaaaah!”

_**ＳＬＥＥＰ．** _

Gloria’s knees buckled. She heard Hop’s body crumpling at her side, like a puppet with the strings cut off. He gave a hard whuff of air, as his lungs went empty.

_**ＳＬＥＥＰ．** _

Zamazenta, please, she tried to gasp out without the air to speak. The fog filled her nose her eyes her mouth her body as the shape in the white mist lunged for her.

Please help me—please help us— she tried to say, and failed. Fading fast.

Please…I…

 _I-I have to protect them._ Gloria begged it with her mind.

 _I promised Victor._ Gloria begged it with her heart.

A pause, a halt.

Footsteps, ancient paws frozen momentarily in the fog.

Then—

**_ＳＬＥＥＰ_ …  
**

A final roaring howl that wound itself into the center of Gloria’s being, before her eyes rolled back. She felt her body collapse to mossy earth.

A thought flickered:

The Fighting Master’s—so, when she became—

Ah.

 _Then_ it would come, Gloria thought, satisfied. And in her relief she finally gave herself over to unconsciousness as the Hero had commanded.

No longer was she so desperately afraid.

A brush of feather-light fur, real as imagined while she still was fading, was the only signal of Zamazenta’s passage. Its shadowy figure leaping toward herself and Hop in the fog had nearly landed, and Gloria breathed out the last of her air, body emptied of everything inside and

…

 _Nothingness_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …i got nothin to say on this one, sorry

**Author's Note:**

> I've been tentatively more active on twitter lately at @sinnerrific if you want to come bug me! Though be warned for potential Bad Things content, I mean, you're reading this story aren't you, it only gets much worse from there
> 
> Comments are so appreciated!! Really, they are ♥ I will try to make a greater effort to respond to them than I have on previous fics, if anyone takes the time to leave their feedback (positive or otherwise) then I feel that it's the least that I can do 〔´∇｀〕


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